The time of air-cooled server racks is nearing its end as upcoming AMD Epyc processors are set to usher in the kilowatt-class era. In a document by Senior Engineer Dr. Jerry Shih from Taiwan Microloops Corp, the company showcased its ongoing development of advanced cooling setups capable of handling such chips. These coolers are designed to handle TDPs ranging from 700W to 1,400W to meet the possible demands of upcoming CPUs. A first time for AMD.
Instead of traditional cooling using a combination of direct contact heatsinks and HVAC systems, the increasing power demands of upcoming chips will require innovative solutions that leverage liquid cooling, such as single- or dual-phase immersion. The latter can be improved using PG25 or other glycol-based ready-to-use data-centre coolant, which combines good heat capacity and corrosion inhibition. But that’s not all, as these can be further enhanced with a chiller system that helps maintain a low temperature on the secondary loop.
Built for the SP7 socket powering next-gen AMD Epyc Venice server processors, these coolers will be offered as complete systems, combining custom high-performance cold plates with single- or dual-chilled loops to ensure high heat dissipation potential. The document showed that the combination of PG25 coolant and a 17°C secondary chilled loop offered a low thermal resistance that implies modest temperature rises even at high power.
According to these tests, this combo delivered an R ≈ 0.01°C/W. This means that a 1,000W heat load should produce ~10°C rise above the chiller temperature, i.e. 27°C (17°C + 10°C). Even at 1,500W, the cold-plate temperature should hover around 32°C (17°C + 15°C). That said, while these cold-plate temps are well within safe operating ranges, they do not factor in the transfer losses between the CPU, thermal paste, and cold-plate. In other words, the CPU temperature will be higher than this.
AMD is set to roll out its Epyc Venice CPUs in 2026, featuring the 2nm Zen 6 architecture. This upcoming platform is expected to significantly increase core counts up to 256 using the denser Zen 6c cores. Models using the regular Zen 6 core will offer up to 96 cores. AMD advertises about 70% performance uplift over the current Turin generation, helped by the updated I/O subsystem and a stronger multithreaded throughput. The brand also claims higher memory bandwidth reaching 1.6TB/s, which is achieved through the use of faster RAM and a 16-channel DDR5 layout.
Overall, AMD’s Epyc Venice processors are set to deliver excellent performance at the cost of more power consumption and cooling demands.
