At NVIDIA GTC, we saw a Solidigm SSD demo of the company’s liquid-cooled SSDs. It was an interesting demo, since the drives themselves were not actually liquid-cooled. Instead, the drives were cooled by liquid cold plates in the servers. Semantics aside, it is an important aspect to future AI servers.
Liquid-cooled SSDs are Coming to NVIDIA Servers
At NVIDIA GTC 2025, we saw the Solidigm liquid cooling SSDs demo. Just for some context on what we are seeing, since there seems to be some confusion online about this, here is the slide.
Essentially there is a new Solidigm D7-PS1010 E1.S 9.5mm SSD that has a cooling design that can cool both sides of the PCB on the drive, and that can then be cooled by a server coldplate.
If you look at the images of the demo enclosure, it will make more sense. Instead of bringing the liquid into the SSD, and having to deal with quick disconnects and potentially losing a drop or two of fluid with eatch change, the server has coldplates. Then the SSDs are inserted into these coldplates which then cover a face of the SSD’s case, thereby keeping it cool.
Here is the diagram of the above without the SSDs installed.
Are the SSDs cooled by liquid instead of air, yes. Are the drives themselves seeing fluid pass through anything attached to them, no.
Solidigm also had the demo running live at GTC and could show the performance and cooling.
Final Words
Taking a step back, this demo accomplishes something important. In 2024 we covered that AMD and NVIDIA would be at ~600kW per rack in 2027. That power density will require more fluid flow through a server. It will also require that components like power shelves, fans, CDUs, and more are removed from the compute racks. Removing the fans from the compute racks that currently take up valuable space and use power means that everything will need to be liquid cooled. That includes any local SSD storage. As a result, the Solidigm design is going to be more important going forward, and is one we can se will be used in the NVIDIA Rubin-era servers.
Are there springs or something holding the cold plate in contact with the SSD? Presumably they’re only really trying to remove <30W from the SSD, and they have lots of area to work with, so it's not like they need a great connection, but it seems weird that just putting the cold plate *next to* the SSD without a fan or any sort of forced contact would work well enough.
@Scott The operating temperature range for these drives is 0°C to 77°C, and the image in this article says that the operating temperature with this cooler is 21.50°C, so this system does provide enough cooling.
That said, I’m concerned about the sliding of one large metal surface against another, and the use of springs to maintain contact with the cold place. Looking at another image here, there’s a lot of dirt or metal shavings in two of the slots on the right side; hmmm. Also not provided are the coolant temperature and flow rate. You can extinguish a fire with cold enough coolant and a high enough flow rate.
Not exactly the first liquid-cooled SSD: Alphacool, Corsair, MSI, and Team Group have all made non-hot-swappable M.2 coolers. The Team Group version uses convection cooling, so no cooling loop needed.
Solidigm has a couple of videos: “Solidigm Liquid Cooling Product Showcase” and “Solidigm Helps Enable Industry’s First Fully Fanless GPU Servers”, which provide slightly more information.
When I first heard about this I thought it would be better.
A level operated, dripless, quick disconnect is entirely possible. Stucchi Group has a few for ganged (multiple) disconnects; their DP lineup has a demo video that is excellent, you can see how it could be applied to true hot swap liquid cooled components.
Liquid cooled sound cards when?
@Evan, it’s not difficult: https://www.pugetsystems.com/mineral-oil-pc/