Impact of Fans Location on the Cooling Efficiency of IT Servers

The role of data centers in modern life has expanded rapidly over the past decades. In addition, this expansion has resulted in a significant increase in the share of data centers in total energy consumption of the world. Thus, reliability and energy efficiency have become a common concern in data centers. Information technology equipment (ITE) and cooling infrastructure are the largest power consumer in data centers. The cooling power in a data center depends on the amount of heat dissipated by ITE. Therefore, the thermal design of the ITE impacts not only the ITE power but also affects the infrastructure power and has a significant role in the overall efficiency of data centers. This paper studies the impact of fans location and airflow balancing on the thermal performance and power of a server. A detailed computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model of the server is built, calibrated and validated using experimental test results. Next, impacts of moving fans to the rear side of the chassis on the flow rate and temperature of components are investigated. Special attention is given to controlling airflow through power supplies.