Lower density brings server efficiency and cooling gains

For many years — well before AI compute's "big bang" in late 2022 — the data center industry has been preoccupied with the notion of designing denser racks to improve overall infrastructure economics. It has also regularly advocated for the use of direct liquid cooling (DLC). Indeed, the underlying megatrend is clearly toward increased density, pushed on by the gradual rise in power of IT silicon components. This is compounded by a trend toward richer server configurations and the economic drive to increase system utilization — despite real-world data on the latter being sparse. Typical (modal) rack densities are now shifting toward 10 kW with more than a quarter of operators reporting densities above this threshold (see Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025).

However, an exclusive focus on densification and DLC (as if they were inevitable) risks becoming tunnel vision that ignores costs and alternative choices. There are several factors to consider when planning a technical roadmap for IT thermal management: