Advanced Thermal Management
Control Centers for Better Cooling
Data center liquid cooling needs CDUs to work well. These units sit between your building’s cooling system and your IT equipment. They make sure the coolant has the right temperature, pressure, and flow. Triton Thermal’s team designs CDU systems that are reliable, efficient, and can grow with your needs.
What Are Cooling Distribution Units?
CDUs work as the brains of liquid cooling systems. They control the cooling fluid that keeps your servers from overheating. A good CDU makes sure coolant reaches all your equipment at just the right temperature.
These units use heat exchangers to keep building water separate from the IT cooling loop. This protects your servers from dirty water or chemicals. The clean, controlled loop works perfectly with chip cooling, rear door units, or immersion tanks.
Key Benefits of CDUs for Modern Data Centers
Better Temperature Control
- Steady Temperatures: Controls keep coolant within 1°C of your target, so servers run smoothly
- Smart Flow Control: Pumps adjust coolant flow based on how hot your systems are running
- Custom Settings: We set temperature and flow rates that work best for your specific equipment
Better Equipment Protection
- Fluid Separation: Keeps building water away from sensitive IT equipment
- Pressure Control: Prevents leaks and ensures fluid flows correctly
- Filtering: Removes tiny particles that could damage cooling parts
Always Running
- Backup Systems: Extra pumps, heat exchangers, and controls keep cooling working if parts fail
- Fault Protection: Systems switch to backups automatically if problems occur
- Early Warning: Sensors spot issues before they affect your equipment
Energy Savings
- Efficient Design: Better pumps and heat exchangers use less power
- Free Cooling Options: Works with systems that use outside air when it’s cool
- Lower PUE: CDU help cut facility energy use by 30-50%
How Triton Thermal Implements CDUs
Our team takes four key steps when designing your CDU system:
Finding Your Needs
We look at your current and future cooling needs. We check heat loads, building limits, backup requirements, and growth plans to size your CDU correctly.
Custom Design
We design CDU systems that fit your exact needs. We choose the best heat exchangers, pumps, controls, and monitors from top makers.
Connection Planning
We create detailed plans for connecting CDUs to your building cooling and IT systems, making sure everything works together.
Testing Everything
We run complete tests to make sure all CDU parts work as expected and deliver the cooling performance you need.
Where CDUs Work Best
CDUs help in many different computing settings:
High-Performance Computing (HPC)
- Handles racks using over 100kW of power
- Keeps processors at perfect temperatures for best performance
- Backup systems ensure cooling for critical research
AI and Machine Learning
- Manages heat from GPU-heavy workloads
- Grows with changing AI training needs
- It saves energy, so more power goes to computing
Business Data Centers
- Adds liquid cooling without rebuilding your facility
- Works with both air and liquid cooling
- Step-by-step implementation with minimal disruption
Colocation and Cloud Providers
- Flexible designs for multi-customer needs
- Grows as customer demands increase
- Offers high-density options that competitors can’t match
The Triton Thermal Advantage for Cooling Distribution Units
Triton Thermal engineers custom cooling CDU solutions that optimize fluid temperature, flow, and pressure for maximum thermal efficiency. Our vendor-agnostic approach ensures we select the ideal CDU technology for your specific compute requirements, facility constraints, and performance targets, creating a precision-engineered thermal management system that balances reliability with operational efficiency.
What To Expect
- Tailored Engineering: We design CDU implementations specifically for your data center’s unique workload profiles, density requirements, and redundancy needs
- Right-Sized Solutions: Our cooling distribution units are precisely sized to match your current demands while accommodating future growth, avoiding costly overprovisioning
- End-to-End Integration: We ensure seamless compatibility between your CDUs and all aspects of your cooling infrastructure, from direct-to-chip systems to facility water loops
Cooling Distribution Units (CDUs) FAQ
How is a CDU different from other cooling equipment?
CDUs focus on managing liquid coolant between your building systems and IT equipment. Unlike air conditioners or chillers, CDUs control temperature, pressure, and flow for direct liquid cooling of servers. They create a clean separation between building water and your IT cooling.
How do CDUs save energy?
CDUs enable liquid cooling that works much better than air cooling. By moving heat away from liquid, CDUs help cut cooling energy use by 30-50% compared to air systems. This means lower power bills and less environmental impact.
Can you add CDUs to existing data centers?
Yes! CDUs work great for upgrades. We can install them with little disruption to your current operations. They bridge old cooling systems and new liquid cooling tech. This lets you move to better cooling step by step without rebuilding everything.
What backup features should a CDU have?
For critical systems, CDUs should have N+1 or 2N backup. This means extra pumps, power supplies, controllers, and sometimes complete spare CDUs. Advanced monitoring, automatic failover, and emergency connection ports add more protection for must-run systems.
How do I know what size CDU I need?
The right CDU size depends on several things: how much heat your IT makes, what coolant temperatures you need, how much flow your cooling systems require, future growth plans, and backup needs. Our team checks all these factors to recommend the best CDU setup for your specific needs.