The first study of the energy savings potential of Asetek RackCDU was made public yesterday by Henry Coles of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s 2013 Data Center Efficiency Summit. The 6-month study investigated Asetek RackCDU D2C™ (Direct-to-Chip) technology that 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.

The study results validate Asetek’s claims of 50% and higher reductions in data center cooling costs with RackCDU D2C.  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% to 24% 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,” notes 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.”

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.

“We are pleased that this collaboration with Cisco and Intel has resulted in important 3rd party validation of RackCDU D2C liquid cooling technology and its value proposition by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,” said André Sloth Eriksen, Asetek Founder and CEO.