LiquidStack expands into single-phase liquid cooling

LiquidStack, one of the first major players in the immersion cooling business, has entered the single-phase liquid cooling market with an expansion of its DataTank product portfolio.

Immersion cooling is the process of dunking the motherboard in a nonconductive liquid to cool it. It’s primarily centered around the CPU, but in this case, it involves the entire motherboard including the memory and other chips.

Immersion cooling has been around for a while, but it has been something of a fringe technology. With server equipment growing hotter and denser, immersion has begun to creep into the mainstream.

Immersion comes in two forms: single phase and dual phase, or two phase. In a single-phase environment, the tank is open and readily accessible. The fluid has a high boiling point, so even under full load, the hardware does not get so hot as to cause the cooling fluid to boil off. The immersion fluid is cooled through heat exchangers, such as radiators.

In a dual-phase/two-phase system, the tank is closed and sealed. The immersion fluid has a much lower boiling point and readily boils off. The vapor collects in the lid of the tank and then drops back into the tank, and the liquid is cooled through thermal dispersion.

Up to now, LiquidStack has only offered two-phase DataTanks.

"LiquidStack is unwavering in its ambition to support the future of AI and other high compute processing," said Joe Capes, CEO of LiquidStack, in a statement. "Since LiquidStack's launch, our mission has always been to become a full service provider of the most advanced liquid cooling solutions in the market, and our new single-phase offering is a key step toward completing our liquid cooling technology stack."

The tanks support both 19-inch and 21-inch standard server racks. They also support multiple form factors, including 1U, 2U, 4U, 600mm, 750mm, OCP, ORV3 and more, with N to 2N Tier IV redundancy to ensure high resiliency and reliable operations.

LiquidStack's single-phase liquid cooling solution will be available for pre-order starting December 1, and delivery is anticipated in the third quarter of 2024.