Cold Plate Liquid Cooling System and Technology

The cold plate liquid cooling technology is a way to indirectly transfer the heat of the heating components to the cooling liquid enclosed in the circulating pipeline through the cold plate (usually a closed cavity made of high thermal conductivity metal such as copper and aluminum), and take away the heat through the cooling liquid.

The technical principle of cold plate liquid cooling is to use the working fluid as the medium of heat transfer in the middle, and transfer the heat from the hot zone to the remote end for cooling. In this technology, the working liquid is separated from the object to be cooled, and the working liquid does not directly contact the electronic device, but transfers the heat of the object to be cooled to the cooling liquid through efficient heat conduction components such as a liquid cold plate, so the cold plate liquid cooling technology is also called indirect liquid cooling technology.

The cold plate liquid cooling technology replaces air with cooling liquid as the heat exchange medium, directs the cooling liquid to the heating chip module, and through indirect contact heat exchange, the heat generated by the heating chip is exported, reducing the temperature of the chip module and improving its computing performance.

Compared with direct contact liquid cooling technology (immersion), cold plate liquid cooling technology has the following advantages:

(1) The cooling liquid of the cold plate liquid cooling technology flows in the cold plate pipeline, and does not directly contact the motherboard and chip module, and its material compatibility is better. In the selection of coolant, only the compatibility between the coolant and the circulation pipeline and the cold plate can be considered.

(2) The cold plate liquid cooling technology can be realized by retaining the original form of the existing server motherboard and refitting. This method is simple to disassemble, convenient to install, and has high technology maturity. Industrialization and large-scale production are more feasible.

However, compared with the direct liquid cooling technology, the cooling liquid of the cold plate liquid cooling technology is indirect contact with the heating chip, which increases the thermal resistance of the heat transfer process, making the heat transfer effect weaker than that of direct cooling.