NVIDIA raises data centre cooling to 45ºC
5th July 2026
USA: In what is being dubbed one of the biggest efficiency leaps in data centre history, US technology company NVIDIA is employing liquid cooling at up to 45ºC.
The Rubin generation of NVIDIA AI infrastructure is said to be the world’s first to achieve 100% liquid cooling in a closed loop with no fans anywhere in the system.
“The NVIDIA DSX reference design for AI factories has zero water consumption – we have eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage,” said Ali Heydari, NVIDIA’s director of data centre cooling and infrastructure. “With dry-cooler-based designs, it’s a closed-loop system with no evaporative water cooling – outside of maybe 1% of the year when we might need chillers in some climates.”
While data centre operators have traditionally recommended an ambient temperature of 18ºC to 27ºC, NVIDIA’s newest AI servers can run their cooling liquid up to 45ºC, making them more energy efficient.
Historically, cooling alone has accounted for up to 40% of a data centre’s electricity consumption. Industry estimates suggest that raising chiller plant temperatures by just 1ºC can cut cooling energy costs by about 4%. At scale, those savings add up quickly. A 50MW hyperscale facility can save over $4m annually in cooling-related energy and water costs by moving to liquid-cooled infrastructure.
NVIDIA insists that in favorable climates, its 45ºC liquid-cooling architecture can enable chiller-less operation with dry coolers, reducing facility cooling water consumption from roughly 2.6 million gallons per MW per year for conventional cooling-tower-based systems to near zero – up to a 100% reduction in water use.
With NVIDIA’s 45ºC liquid cooling, heat is captured directly at the chip and transported through liquid loops operating at much higher temperatures, allowing outdoor dry coolers to reject heat efficiently for much of the year while significantly reducing mechanical cooling requirements and facility water consumption.
The coolant – 75% water and 25% propylene glycol – flows through cold plates that sit directly on the processors, pulling heat out at the source. In an AI factory, coolant flows from a coolant distribution unit to the servers in a closed-loop.
Another key benefit of this new model for AI factories is the potential for waste heat recovery.
