Unraveling the Efficiency, Performance and Sustainability Trade-offs: Liquid Assisted Air Cooling vs Traditional Air Cooling

This conference talk presents a case study comparing Liquid Assisted Air Cooling versus Traditional Air Cooling, delivered by Cloudflare engineers Leslye Paniagua and Sharon Alper at the Open Compute Project. Explore how thermal solution choices significantly impact energy efficiency and system power consumption, while examining whether liquid cooling benefits justify their additional costs. Learn from test results of a specific server architecture that evaluates real-world impacts of different cooling methods under defined workloads and network applications. Consider critical factors like datacenter readiness, infrastructure constraints, and rack power availability when implementing advanced cooling technologies. Understand the TCO, serviceability, efficiency metrics, and sustainability goals that determine when transitioning to modern cooling technologies makes sense for globally distributed infrastructure.