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Tucson City Council votes 7-0, unanimously to kill controversial Data Center (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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https://azluminaria.org/2025/08/06/tucson-city-council-rejects-project-blue-amid-intense-community-pressure/

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[–] 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I don't understand why they even need to use up water. Water cooling does not require you to evaporate the water. You can just keep it as a closed system and reuse the water.

If nuclear power plants can manage it which would be easy for a server farm

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Closed loop watercooling is really just air cooling with extra steps. The water is heated by the devices and cooled by a large radiator with fans. Or it's cooled with a chiller which in turn is cooled by a radiator with fans.

    Replacing the water is the most effective (yet wasteful) way to remove the heat.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I once saw a spa that was using a liquid cooled bank of computers to heat their pool water. It involves a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger so they're not pumping chlorinated pool water through their servers but...I wish we did more of that. Server farms are a source of heat, lots of other things need heat.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    To a point, yes. While you’re still using air to cool the water, I think it’s still a little more efficient than blindly keeping the server room at a low-ish temperature.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Keeping the server room cool is just using an air conditioner which is cooled by a radiator with a fan, and then using that cooled air to cool another radiator with a fan. Every step is a loss of efficiency.

    The main advantage of water loops is that you get to use a different form factor for the radiator and fan by moving it away from the source of heat and aren't limited by the case dimensions.

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