The race to power and cool the next generation of AI accelerators is pushing cooling technology into places it has never gone before — including the metal bars that carry electricity inside a server.
At a recent industry show, ServeTheHome reported on gear shown at the Wiwynn booth that points to where AI data centers are heading. The standout was a liquid-cooled 800V DC busbar from TE Connectivity. A busbar is the heavy conductor that distributes power inside a rack; the move to 800V direct current is meant to feed the enormous appetite of next-generation AI accelerators. According to ServeTheHome, the equipment is so power-dense that even the busbars now need liquid cooling, not just the chips themselves.
The cooling itself is also changing. According to Hackaday, Nvidia's new AI servers run on what it describes as "hot tub" coolant and no longer require evaporators. In plainer terms, the systems are designed to move heat using warmer liquid, doing away with a component traditionally needed to manage it.
Taken together, the two reports sketch a single trend: as AI hardware draws more electricity and throws off more heat, the industry is rethinking both how power is delivered and how that heat is carried away. Higher-voltage DC power reduces losses at scale, and liquid cooling — reaching into components like busbars — becomes the default rather than the exception.
Why it matters: the AI boom is increasingly limited not just by the chips, but by the unglamorous plumbing and wiring around them, and these advances show how data center infrastructure is being redesigned to keep ever-hungrier accelerators fed and cool.