NVIDIA liquid cooling breakthrough enables 45°C data center operation
Tags Infrastructure · AI
NVIDIA detailed a liquid cooling system design that operates at 45°C coolant temperature, cutting data center water use to near zero. The counterintuitive approach uses warmer-than-ambient coolant to eliminate the need for evaporative cooling and reduce mechanical cooling energy. The design is part of NVIDIA's Rubin platform infrastructure roadmap. The breakthrough addresses one of the fastest-growing constraints on AI data center scaling: water consumption. Traditional data centers use millions of gallons of water annually for cooling.
Technical significance
Water consumption is becoming a regulatory and reputational bottleneck for AI data center expansion. Cooling innovations that reduce or eliminate water use remove a critical permitting barrier and allow data center deployment in water-constrained regions. This design could become standard for next-generation AI infrastructure deployments.