Cooling computing devices in a data center with ambient air cooled using heat from the computing devices

Abstract

To reduce power consumption and more efficiently cool computing devices in a data center, an air supply unit supplies air from outside the data center to an air handling unit, which cools servers within the data center using the supplied air. Using air from outside the data center, rather than recirculating and cooling air from within the data center, reduces the power consumption of the data center. In an embodiment, a chiller and/or an evaporative cooling system are coupled to the air supply unit to allow further cooling of the outside air before it is circulated. Heat generated by the servers within the data center is collected, for example using thermal pathways coupled to server components, and used by the chiller in an absorption or adsorption process to further reduce power consumption of the data center and allow the air handling unit to further cool the outside air.