Effects of different water-cooled heat sinks on the cooling system performance in a data center

Abstract

Data center, as a special building form, has attracted much attention because of its increasing energy consumption. In order to reduce the energy consumption of data center caused by cooling system, research on the water-cooled heat sinks used to cool chips has become increasingly important with the steep increase in the heat flux density of data centers. To explore the effect of different water-cooled heat sinks on cooling system performance, a server water-cooled system for the server cabinet was built, and the chip heat dissipation performance, optimal thermal management, and system energy consumption were simulated by equipping a cooling tower and two types of fin-type water-cooled heat sinks (A-type and B-type). By comparing the effects of A- and B-type heat sinks on the server water-cooled system performance, the optimal water working condition was obtained under different atmospheric conditions by minimizing the system power consumption to guarantee that the chip temperature is no higher than 70 °C. It was found that the optimal cooling water flow rate fluctuates in a large range under different atmospheric conditions. A server water-cooled system equipped with B-type can achieve significant energy savings compared to those from A-type system when the atmospheric relative humidity and temperature are high. Considering a case study from Tianjin, China, it is shown that the month-averaged power usage effectiveness in June is 1.2 for A-type and 1.14 for B-type systems.