How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

They do have a good point here. If you do the total power budget on a typical 1U (discrete chassis, not blade) server which is packed full of a wall of 40mm fans pushing air, the highest speed screaming 40mm 12VDC fans can be 20W electrical load each. It's easy to "spend" at least 120W at maximum heat from the CPUs, in a dual socket system, just on the fans to pull air from the front/cold side of the server through to the rear heat exhaust.

Just going up to 60mm or 80mm standard size DC fans can be a huge efficiency increase in watt-hours spent per cubic meters of air moved per hour.

I am extremely skeptical of the "12x" but using larger fans is more efficient.

from the URL linked:

> Bigger fans = bigger efficiency gains Oxide server sleds are designed to a custom form factor to accommodate larger fans than legacy servers typically use. These fans can move more air more efficiently, cooling the systems using 12x less energy than legacy servers, which each contain as many as 7 fans, which must work much harder to move air over system components.

FWIW, we had to have the idle speed of our fans lowered because the usual idle of around 5k RPM was WAY too much cooling. We generally run our fans at around 2.5kRPM (barely above idle). This is due to not only the larger fans, but also the fact that we optimized and prioritized as little restriction on airflow as possible. If you’ve taken apart a current gen 1U/2U server and then compare that to how little our airflow is restricted and how little our fans have to work, the 12X reduction becomes a bit clearer.

> the usual idle of around 5k RPM was WAY too much cooling.

What does this mean? Can one actually get too much cooling? Do you get like condensation and stuff, that kind of "too much cooling" ?

I'm not being snarky, i actually don't know.

It must mean cooling significantly below the target temperature, and thus wasting power to do it

I see, thank you!