Experimental Investigation of a Direct Liquid Immersion Cooled Prototype for High Performance Electronic Systems

As the demand grows for electronics to become faster and more compact, the expectation for tomorrow´s data center is no different. Like many of the current high performance data center installations, design considerations on all scales must be taken into account. The proposed solution does just this by looking at the entire cooling approach from the chip level all the way to the plenum level. The solution´s enclosure, where all the heated elements are immersed in either FC-72 or Novec 649, has dimensions of 150 mm × 300 mm × 38 mm (H × L × W). The design is versatile allowing for either flow or pool boiling heat transfer. Under pool boiling conditions, heat transfer coefficients as high as 11.5 kW/m². K were achieved with surface enhancements and maximum power dissipations as high as 320 W were yielded as chip temperatures were roughly 58 °C, well below typical operating conditions. With the introduction of dielectric fluid flow within the enclosure, maximum power dissipations achieved increased substantially, reaching 605 W, which corresponds to a volumetric power dissipation of 0.354 W/cm³.