Nvidia announced two new liquid-cooled GPUs at Computex2022, but they aren't coming to high-end gaming rigs. They're headed to the data center.
Nvidia is taking some notes from the enthusiast PC building crowd in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers. The company announced two new liquid-cooled GPUs during its Computex 2022 keynote, but they won’t be making their way into your next gaming PC.
In addition to HGX server racks, Nvidia will offer the liquid-cooled versions of the H100 and A100 as slot-in PCIe cards. The A100 is coming in the second half of 2022, and the H100 is coming in early 2023. Nvidia says “at least a dozen” system builders will have these GPUs available by the end of the year, including options from Asus, ASRock, and Gigabyte.
Instead of an all-in-one system like you’d find on a liquid-cooled gaming GPU, the A100 and H100 use a direct liquid connection to the processing unit itself. Everything but the feed lines is hidden in the GPU enclosure, which itself only takes up one PCIe slot . In addition to better energy efficiency, Nvidia says liquid cooling provides benefits for preserving water. The company says millions of gallons of water are evaporated in data centers each year to keep air-cooled systems operating. Liquid cooling allows that water to recirculate, turning “a waste into an asset,” according to head of edge infrastructure at Equinix Zac Smith.