Guizhou unveils first liquid-cooled computing cabin

The servers are submerged in specialized fluids to absorb heat. [Photo/ddcpc website]

Guizhou's first immersion liquid-cooled data center went into operation on Aug 7 at the Southern Energy Big Data Center in Guian New Area, Southwest China's Guizhou province.

Built by China Southern Power Grid Guizhou Power Grid Co, this computing cabin is housed within a standard 40-foot shipping container equipped with four immersion liquid-cooling cabinets.

Unlike conventional air-cooling methods, servers are directly immersed in specialized fluids that absorb heat. This heat is then expelled through an external closed-loop cooling tower, marking a significant breakthrough in data center thermal management.

The cabin boasts an optimized power usage effectiveness (PUE) expected to stay below 1.15. This means over 0.87 kilowatt-hour out of every 1 kWh of electricity consumed goes directly into core computing tasks, outperforming the national data center average PUE of 1.34.

Beyond energy savings, the prefabricated, modular design shortens deployment cycles. Fully integrated and prefabricated in the factory, the cabin is delivered on-site for immediate hoisting and connection. The entire construction period took just three months, reducing build time by over 80 percent.

Furthermore, utilizing containerized structures eliminates the need for civil engineering of dedicated server rooms, cutting initial investment costs by 40 percent to 50 percent compared to traditional solutions. The units can be deployed at power substations or zero-carbon industrial parks, functioning as plug-and-play modules.

The computing cabin can conduct localized edge computing on large data sets, including power substation activities and drone footage of transmission lines. This reduces data processing times, enhancing the speed and efficiency of digital power grid operations.