NVIDIA Innovates with Waterless AI Data Centers

NVIDIA Innovates with Waterless AI Datacenters

NVIDIA claims to have solved the water issue of AI datacenters with a closed-loop cooling system, eliminating the need for chillers. This promise could mark an industrial turning point, provided one reads the fine print. On the eve of a climate summit, NVIDIA announces "waterless" cooled servers.

Cooling towers in datacenters consume water at alarming rates, raising concerns among water network managers and sometimes the mayors of the host cities (up to 80% of the injected water evaporates directly). Therefore, NVIDIA wanted to make it known, just days before London Climate Week, that its new DSX reference architecture for Rubin servers addresses this issue. Josh Parker, its sustainability director, even stated that "the water challenge for datacenters is largely solved."

A Closed Loop at 45°C and No Need for Chillers: How It Works

The DSX system is based on a principle familiar to the industry (liquid cooling closed loops are not new), but NVIDIA extends it to the entire rack: each component, GPU, processor, and network card, is cooled by a closed circuit where a mixture of water and propylene glycol circulates. Heat is captured at the source and expelled to an external heat exchanger, without ever passing through an evaporation tower: hence the " zero water consumption."

The key to the system is the fluid's inlet temperature: 45°C (113°F, hotter than a hot tub). This is precisely what separates it from architectures operating at 35°C, which require mechanical chillers. At 45°C, a simple air cooler utilizing ambient air suffices in most temperate zones, eliminating the need for heavy and energy-consuming infrastructure. The power rises to 190-230 kW per rack, nearly double that of the best current Blackwell installations, which have a reduced water footprint and do not require chillers.

NVIDIA did not invent the 45°C (Lenovo and HPE already offer it), but it pushes the logic by eliminating the need for external water. France has paved part of the way by utilizing waste heat from datacenters to heat swimming pools or urban networks, and some Nordic installations supply aquaculture farms. The DSX also produces recoverable heat at the output, opening the same circular economy prospects.

The Promise Against the European Regulatory Wall

However, the promise deserves some nuances, starting with the weather. Air coolers can do without mechanical cooling in temperate climates, but their efficiency drops when temperatures rise, and datacenters in Singapore or Nevada during summer will have their own calculations to make. NVIDIA acknowledges that supplementary cooling is still necessary in "rare" extreme climates, and converting existing sites requires hydraulic work that analysts deem far from trivial.

Moreover, the announcement comes in a European regulatory context that is anything but a backdrop. On June 3, the Commission presented its package on the energy efficiency of datacenters, accompanied by a rating system explicitly covering water consumption, with a goal of carbon neutrality for the sector by 2030. In France, the DDADUE law (whose implementing decree came into force on January 1, 2026) requires sites over 500 kW to report their water consumption annually, under penalty of fines up to 50,000 euros per datacenter. NVIDIA sells servers; its hosting clients must now account to regulators. An architecture that structurally eliminates water becomes, in this context, both a commercial argument and a technical response.

Europe estimates that 200 billion euros in investments are needed to triple its datacenter capacity by 2036, while remaining dependent on American suppliers for the architectures expected to meet its environmental goals. How many operators will adopt the DSX will depend as much on costs as on regulatory pressure.

The question of water in AI datacenters will not be settled simply because NVIDIA proclaimed it on the eve of a climate summit. It will be resolved when large-scale deployments have confirmed the figures under real conditions, and when European regulators have verified whether the promise holds up in the Mediterranean summer.