Mineral oil has been used in immersion cooling because it is not hazardous, transfers heat almost as well as water but doesn’t conduct an electric charge. Fluorinert, a dielectric coolant from 3M that was used in the Cray 2 and other supercomputers.

The Intel demonstration (show above) looks far less sophisticated than the design was introduced by UK firm Iceotope way back at SC09.

Now Intel are giving the process a big shot in the arm by demoing oil-filled boxes built by an Austin, Texas, Green Revolution.

Oil based cooling can support up to 100 kilowatts per 42U rack, far beyond current average heat loads of 4 to 8 watts a rack and high-density loads of 12 to 30 kilowatts per rack.

Iceotope figures show that their servers can reduce facility operating costs and carbon output. Data centres can save 20% of power consumption at the server level and make a saving of 97% of costs associated with cooling power, an overall reduction of over 50% for the typical data centre.