Intel finds hot oil helps servers keep their cool

Though it may sound somewhat weird, a hot oil bath might actually help improve performance of servers, says chipmaker Intel.

Intel recently completed a year-long test using a liquid cooling technique in which servers were placed in a custom-server rack filled with mineral oil.

The system, made by Austin, Texas-based Green Revolution Cooling was found to cut power consumption from servers by 10 per cent to 15 per cent and from cooling equipment by about 90 per cent, according to the company.

As the oil does not conduct electricity, components are not shorted out and the oil, which is circulated through the tank gets cooled through a heat exchanger.
 
According to Mike Patterson, senior power and thermal architect at Intel, the company was in the process of evaluating  a number of radical new cooling techniques, including other liquid-cooling ideas, to better understand how energy consumption could be reduced. Data centres are consumers of huge amounts of energy, which forms a significant part of the overall cost of operation.

In a number of cases, companies could not even get enough power to run - and cool - the equipment properly.

The immersive cooling idea has appealed so much to Intel it was now considering making servers designed especially for it. To allow immersion, server fans have to be removed, hard drives encased, and in addition a  few other modifications. According to Patterson servers designed for immersive cooling come with a heat sink designed for liquid cooling (rather than air), which meant no fans as also no solid-state drives.