A 6-month study of the energy savings potential of Asetek RackCDU supports claims of 50 percent and higher reductions in data center cooling costs with RackCDU D2C (Direct-to-Chip) technology.
RackCDU D2C directly cools the hottest components in a server (CPUs and memory) with hot or cold water and the balance of the server with data center air. The study demonstrates that hybrid liquid cooling solutions deliver substantial site-level energy savings. In addition, the study shows reductions in server IT power load. Together, the cooling power reduction and server efficiency improvements result in overall data center energy savings of 16 percent to 24 percent in an already efficient air-cooled data center (PUE of 1.45).
For data centers with higher PUE the savings will be greater. (PUEs of 1.8 to 2.0 are considered typical in the industry.)
One surprising result of the study is that substantial savings are achievable by connecting RackCDU to existing chilled water systems, according to Henry Coles, program manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The ability to achieve savings by simply tapping into existing chilled water systems broadens the base of data centers that will find deploying RackCDU attractive, he said.
The study was the result of collaboration between Intel, Cisco, and Asetek, with research conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and sponsored by the California Energy Commission. The study was conducted in the High Performance Computing Facility at LBL using Cisco provided UCS C220 M3 servers equipped with Intel provided Xeon E5 -2690 V2 CPUs and Asetek D2C server coolers in a Cisco rack equipped with an Asetek RackCDU (rack cooling distribution unit) and Server Technology cabinet PDUs.