The improved efficiency of mineral oil may offer simplicity in facility design compared to traditional air cooling and provide a means for cost savings. Despite its improved cooling efficiency and cost savings, a mineral oil immersion cooling technique is still not widely implemented and original equipment manufacturers are reluctant to jeopardize sales of existing air-based cooling system equipment. Only compelling physics regarding thermal performance of direct immersion cooling is not enough for data center operators. Many uncertainties and concerns persist regarding the effects of mineral oil immersion cooling on the reliability of information technology (IT) equipment both at the component and chassis level. This paper is a first attempt at addressing this challenge by reviewing the changes in physical and chemical properties of IT equipment materials like polyvinyl chloride (PVC), printed circuit board (PCB), and capacitors and characterizes the interconnect reliability of materials. The changes in properties of a mineral oil like kinematic viscosity and dielectric strength are also cited as important factors and discussed briefly. The changes in mechanical properties like elasticity, hardness, swelling, and creep are being shown in the paper for thermoplastic materials. The chemical reaction between material and mineral oil as a function of time and temperature is also conferred. The literature gathered on the subject and quantifiable data gathered by the authors provide the primary basis for this research document.

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As a common practice in the data center industry, chassis fans are used to direct air flow independent from neighboring servers. However, these fans are less efficient compared to larger rack level counterparts and also operate at higher sound levels. In this study, a novel approach is proposed whereby the smaller chassis enclosed fans are replaced with an array of larger fans, installed behind the stacked servers that share air flow.As a baseline study for comparison of the current scenario, a CPU dominated 1.5U Open Compute server, with four 60mm fans installed within the server, is characterized experimentally for its flow impedance, air flow rate, effect on die temperature and power consumption for various compute utilization levels. Larger fans with a square frame size of 80mm are carefully selected and individually characterized for their air moving capacity and power consumption. CFD is used to simulate the system of stacked servers and larger fans to obtain its flow characteristics and operating points.The fan power consumption of the larger fans is determined experimentally at these operating points replicated in an air flow bench. Comparing with the base line experiments, this study predicts a significant decrease in fan power consumption, without conceding the flow rate and the static pressure requirements of the server.

In general, smaller fans operate at lower efficiencies than larger fans of proportional linear dimensions. In this work, the applicability of replacing smaller, 60 mm baseline fans from within the chassis of web servers with an array of larger, geometrically proportional 80 mm and 120 mm fans consolidated to the back of a rack is experimentally tested. Initial characterization of the selected fans showed that the larger fans operate at double peak total efficiency of the smaller fans. A stack of four servers were used in a laboratory setting to represent a rack of servers. When all four servers were stressed at uniform computational loadings, the 80 mm fans resulted in 50.1–52.6% reduction in total rack fan power compared to the baseline fans. The 120 mm fans showed similar reduction in rack fan power of 47.6–54.0% over the baseline. Since actual data centers rarely operate at uniform computational loading across servers in a rack, a worst case scenario test was conceived in which the array of larger fans were controlled by a single server operating at peak computational workload while the other three in the rack remained idle. Despite significant overcooling in the three idle servers, the 80 mm and 120 mm fan configurations still showed 35% and 34% reduction in total rack fan power compared to the baseline fans. The findings strongly suggest that a rack-level fan scheme in which servers share airflow from an array of consolidated larger fans is superior to traditional chassis fans.

Complete immersion of servers in dielectric mineral oil has recently become a promising technique for minimizing cooling energy consumption in data centers. However, a lack of sufficient published data and long-term documentation of oil immersion cooling performance make most data center operators hesitant to apply these approaches to their mission critical facilities. In this study, a single server was fully submerged horizontally in mineral oil. Experiments were conducted to observe the effects of varying the volumetric flow rate and oil inlet temperature on thermal performance and power consumption of the server. Specifically, temperature measurements of the central processing units (CPUs), motherboard (MB) components, and bulk fluid were recorded at steady-state conditions. These results provide an initial bounding envelope of environmental conditions suitable for an oil immersion data center. Comparing with results from baseline tests performed with traditional air cooling, the technology shows a 34.4% reduction in the thermal resistance of the system. Overall, the cooling loop was able to achieve partial power usage effectiveness (pPUECooling) values as low as 1.03. This server level study provides a preview of possible facility energy savings by utilizing high temperature, low flow rate oil for cooling. A discussion on additional opportunities for optimization of information technology (IT) hardware and implementation of oil cooling is also included.