To a point, yes. While you’re still using air to cool the water, I think it’s still a little more efficient than blindly keeping the server room at a low-ish temperature.
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scutiger@lemmy.world 1 day agoClosed loop watercooling is really just air cooling with extra steps. The water is heated by the devices and cooled by a large radiator with fans. Or it’s cooled with a chiller which in turn is cooled by a radiator with fans.
Replacing the water is the most effective (yet wasteful) way to remove the heat.
d00phy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
scutiger@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Keeping the server room cool is just using an air conditioner which is cooled by a radiator with a fan, and then using that cooled air to cool another radiator with a fan. Every step is a loss of efficiency.
The main advantage of water loops is that you get to use a different form factor for the radiator and fan by moving it away from the source of heat and aren’t limited by the case dimensions.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
I once saw a spa that was using a liquid cooled bank of computers to heat their pool water. It involves a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger so they’re not pumping chlorinated pool water through their servers but…I wish we did more of that. Server farms are a source of heat, lots of other things need heat.