When going through photos for an upcoming review, the team was talking about something that was really fun. We are using a system that has four 3000W liquid-cooled power supplies. Not only are they liquid-cooled, they also block airflow into the power supply, making them very different.
MiTAC Intel DSG 3000W Fanless Liquid Cooled PSU
The power supplies were originally made for Intel DSG servers. In 2023, we broke the news that Intel Exiting the Server Business Selling DSG to MiTAC. Although these power supplies are Intel-branded, they are DSG products used in the MiTAC servers.
Here is the coolest part. The power supplies have liquid cooling inlet and outlet nozzles above the CRPS power supply PCB connector.
The power supplies are 3000W units that are 80Plus Titanium rated.
On the rear of the power supply, we get something really interesting: a solid faceplate. Most server power supplies have fans that pull air through the chassis and PSU and out of the chassis. Here, that pathway is blocked off by sheet metal.
This design is because an almost fully liquid-cooled server can instead use smaller numbers and fans to move air through the chassis.
Final Words
Some will look at a fanless liquid-cooled power supply and think, “Cool, but so what?” Removing the fan from a power supply removes a moving part that can fail, and that also uses power. It also is most useful on very highly liquid-cooled servers. You would typically not liquid cool a power supply unless the internal liquid cooling goes well beyond cold plates on PSUs or CPUs. This is really something used in higher-end liquid cooling designs. In other words, there are many liquid-cooled servers out there that do not get to this level of liquid cooling.
We will have the full system on STH in the next few days. This week is a very busy week, so we thought folks might like to see this one outside of the context of our full system review.
Hot-plug fluid plugs right above the power connector? Clearly they’re confident in their leak management.
Also, 3 kW PSUs with a C14 plug instead of C20? I thought C13/14 was only good for 10A?
@Scott looks like C21 to me, which covers the 16A needed by this PSU for 3kw.
A very interesting point in electronics design, but getting the cover off would be a lot more interesting! How they pack critical heat-generating components around the cold plate would be a great view to have. Any chance you can crack one of these open in the style of ChargerLab’s teardowns?
@Frank yes, that is C21/C22, but in addition to that, if you click on the 4th picture it says that with a 100~127V input the output is limited to 1kW, to reach 3kW you need 200~240V input.
What voltage is supplied to racks in the US?
I’d guess 3-phase up to the rack, and then? 220-240V would make a lot more sense for getting higher efficiency from rack-based PSUs. I doubt there’s much out there on the datacenter world that is still 110-120V only; PSUs tend to be world-wide SKUs nowadays.
splashy splashy server crashy
@Frank, most data centers have 208v(Phase to Phase and 120v Phase to neutral – 4 wires) 3-Phase WYE. 220-240v(Phase to Phase – 3 wires) 3-Phase DELTA, loads tend to be for inductive – ie balanced loads across all three phases. When you have an imbalance in phases you need to use a 3-phase 208v to send the imbalance thru the neutral wire. In the Datacenter I co-manage all power to the racks from the PDU is 3-Phase WYE and to the CRAC units it’s 3-Phase Delta 480v. When you also use a WYE configuration you can also get three circuits of 120v(Phase to neutral)
I hope it helps to understand.
@Mike does that mean that the PSUs in the racks all run on 120V single phase?
I was under the impression that capacity density and efficiency were greatly improved at 240V single phase vs 120V single phase.
Wait, am I reading the label right… It has 240V DC for China only? Where in the hell do they provide 240V DC. I’ve been around datacentres for 15 years and haven’t seen that yet. I’ve seen the ‘high voltage’ DC (400V) to top of rack and step down to 48V for servers, but not yet a 240V DC.
Anyone know where that’s commonly seen?