Cooling electronic devices in a data center

Abstract

A data center cooling system includes a modular heat sink and a working fluid. The modular heat sink includes an evaporator configured to thermally contact a heat-generating electronic device to receive heat from the data center heat-generating electronic device; a condenser coupled to the evaporator and configured to transfer the heat from the heat-generating electronic device into a cooling fluid; and a plurality of transport tubes that fluidly couple the evaporator and the condenser, at least one of the plurality of transport tubes including an open end positioned in the evaporator and a closed end positioned in the condenser. The working fluid vaporizes in the evaporator based on receipt of the heat from the heat-generating electronic device, and circulates, in vapor phase, from the evaporator to the condenser in the transport member, and circulates, in liquid phase, from the condenser to the evaporator.

Description

technical field [0001] This document relates to systems and methods for providing cooling of electronic devices, such as computer server racks and related devices in computer data centers. Background technique [0002] Computer users are often concerned with the speed (eg, megahertz and gigahertz) of the computer's microprocessor. Many people forget that this speed often comes at a price—higher power consumption. This power dissipation also generates heat. This is because by simple laws of physics, all energy has to go somewhere, and somewhere it ends up being converted to heat. A pair of microprocessors mounted on a single motherboard can draw several hundred watts or more. For the many computers in a large data center, this number needs to be multiplied by the thousands (or tens of thousands) to easily understand the amount of heat that can be generated. The impact of power consumed by critical loads in a data center is often exacerbated when incorporating all the auxi...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

In some cases, one or more components or devices on a server tray may be located in areas of the tray that are difficult to cool; for example, areas where forced convection is less effective or unavailable

[0004] Insufficient and / or insufficient cooling may result in one or more electronic devices on the tray failing due to the temperature of the device exceeding the maximum rated temperature

While some redundancy may be built into computer data centers, server racks, or even individual trays, equipment failure due to overheating can still be extremely costly in speed, efficiency, and expense

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