In the AI era, heat generation in data centers is rising sharply, so attention is turning from air cooling, which uses air to dissipate heat, to liquid cooling, which uses liquid to cool servers. Direct liquid cooling (DLC) targets heat-generating components such as CPUs and GPUs, while immersion cooling submerges entire servers in fluid. Compared with air cooling, liquid cooling can reduce the energy consumption of cooling by up to 80%. In response, Kixx is offering Kixx DLC Fluid PG25 and the Kixx Immersion Fluid S lineup to meet the needs of modern data centers.

Across this two-part Liquid Cooling Solutions series, we explore why data centers are looking to liquid cooling and how Kixx is responding to this shift.

Part 1 – Why Data Centers Are Looking to Liquid Cooling in the AI Era

Part 2 – Kixx’s Vision for the Future of Data Center Cooling in the AI Era

Key Takeaways

• The expansion of AI and cloud services is increasing heat generation in data centers, which makes cooling a critical challenge.
• As conventional air cooling reaches its limits in high-density AI server environments, the industry is focusing on two liquid cooling technologies: immersion cooling and direct liquid cooling.
• Liquid cooling delivers key operational benefits, including improved energy efficiency, lower operating costs, and support for sustainability.

As cloud computing and AI continue to expand, the growing amount of heat generated by data centers has made cooling technology a key issue for the industry. Against this backdrop, liquid cooling, which uses liquid to cool servers, is gaining traction in the industry.

In this two-part series, the Kixx Newsroom explores why data centers are looking to liquid cooling and how Kixx is responding to this shift. In part one, we look at why cooling has become a critical challenge for data centers and the operational advantages of implementing liquid cooling.

Cooling Becomes a Top Priority for Data Centers

Rising heat generation and cooling demands are driven by the high power density of AI servers

Cooling accounts for approximately 40%¹ of a data center’s total energy consumption. As cloud computing and AI have become part of everyday life and the volume of data being processed has increased, heat generated by servers has emerged as a major data center risk.

AI servers require far more power and generate significantly more heat than conventional servers. Power consumption in a high-performance AI server environment can reach approximately 80 kW — equivalent to the power used by around 100 to 115 standard wall-mounted residential air conditioners.*

What happens if a cooling system cannot remove the heat generated by servers quickly enough? When a semiconductor approaches its designed temperature limit, it automatically reduces its processing speed and power consumption, resulting in lower performance. This is known as thermal throttling.

Repeated exposure to high temperatures is also known to accelerate the degradation of semiconductor components, shortening their lifespan and increasing the likelihood of failure. If thermal throttling is unable to bring the temperature under control, the system may trigger an emergency shutdown to prevent circuit damage. If an issue spreads across a rack or an entire data center, it can escalate into a much larger problem involving service outages and recovery costs.

*Simple conversion based on 0.7–0.8 kW rated power consumption per residential wall-mounted air conditioner.

From Air Cooling to Liquid Cooling             

Air cooling dissipates heat while liquid cooling absorbs it directly.

High-density AI server environments are creating more situations in which conventional air-cooling-based systems alone are unable to manage heat effectively. This is why liquid cooling is gaining traction.

Air cooling circulates air around servers using fans and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment to remove heat. Liquid cooling, meanwhile, can broadly be divided into two approaches. In direct liquid cooling, cold plates are attached to components where heat is concentrated, and fluid is circulated through the plates to remove that heat. In immersion cooling, entire pieces of equipment, including servers, are submerged in a non-conductive fluid that absorbs the heat they generate.

Immersion cooling and direct liquid cooling differ in both the area they cool and the structure of the system. Direct liquid cooling primarily targets heat-intensive components such as CPUs and GPUs, making it well suited to environments where heat from specific high-temperature components needs to be managed effectively. Immersion cooling, by contrast, cools the entire server by submerging it in fluid, making it suitable for environments where the whole server needs to be cooled at the system level.

Which approach is appropriate depends on factors including a data center’s heat-generation characteristics, system configuration, and operating environment.

The Operational Value of Liquid Cooling

Liquid cooling for data centers has energy-efficiency, operating-cost, and sustainability benefits.

Liquid cooling provides a range of operational benefits, including improved energy efficiency, lower operating costs, and support for sustainability. Its energy-efficiency advantages stem from differences in heat-transfer efficiency. Within the same amount of space, liquids are known to remove heat more efficiently than air².

This naturally translates into lower operating costs. In the case of immersion cooling, energy used for cooling and air conditioning can be reduced by up to 80%³, while operating expenses can be reduced by around 30%⁴ in some immersion-cooling deployments. Liquid cooling also offers benefits from a sustainability perspective. As the amount of energy required for cooling decreases, a data center’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) can improve as well.

Through these benefits in energy efficiency, operating costs, and sustainability, liquid cooling is establishing itself as a new direction for data center cooling.

In part two, we will take a closer look at how Kixx is responding to this shift and the technologies behind the design of Kixx DLC Fluid PG25 and the Kixx Immersion Fluid S lineup.

Meanwhile, Kixx released a Liquid Cooling Solutions video highlighting the ongoing shift in data center cooling methods. The full video is available on the official Kixx YouTube channel.

¹ McKinsey & Company, Investing in the rising data center economy, 2023.

² The University of Texas at Arlington, Computational Analysis for Thermal Optimization of Server for Single-Phase Immersion Cooling, 2019.

³ Springer Nature, Energy Informatics, 2026.

⁴ Dell’Oro Group, Is Immersion Cooling the Answer to Data Center Sustainability?, 2021.