NVIDIA data center hardware cooled with 113-degree water

NVIDIA is now cooling its data center hardware with water that reaches 113 degrees Fahrenheit—hotter than a typical hot tub. The company’s latest GPUs, such as the H100 and B200, are designed to operate efficiently at these elevated temperatures, allowing data centers to use warm water for cooling instead of chilled water. This shift matters because it can significantly reduce energy consumption and operational costs, as data centers no longer need to expend electricity to cool the water before using it. According to NVIDIA, the approach leverages direct-to-chip liquid cooling, where water at 113°F is circulated through cold plates attached to the GPUs. The background is that traditional data center cooling relies on chilled water around 45–50°F, which requires energy-intensive chillers. By contrast, NVIDIA’s method can use water directly from cooling towers or other sources without additional chilling. The likely next steps include broader adoption of this warm-water cooling in NVIDIA’s data center partners, potentially saving millions of dollars in energy costs and reducing the carbon footprint of AI and high-performance computing workloads.