Air, cold plate or immersion: choosing a cooling approach by density and site
Rack power decides the approach; whether the site has facility water decides the first step.
Start with power per rack
- Air cooling: up to 30 kW per rack, matching the AI-Edge tier and suited to edge inference.
- Cold-plate liquid cooling: up to 100–120 kW per rack (AI-Core, AI-Flex), with integrated CDUs and a 34 / 44 °C secondary loop that allows free cooling with dry coolers.
- Immersion cooling: standalone tanks of 26–150 kW each with an external CDU; plug-and-play all-in-one tanks of 7–30 kW.
Then check for facility water
With facility cooling water, connect room-level or in-row CDUs. Without it, a liquid-to-air CDU beside the rack (such as MGX SKU 2) lets you start using liquid cooling anyway.
Leave room for later
The MGX 1.1 integrated rack comes in three models. A site without liquid cooling can start with the air-cooled model and later convert the same rack to cold-plate cooling without changing the layout, power or cabling.
How cooling capacity is distributed
Rack-mount CDUs of 15–40 kW serve one or a few racks; in-row CDUs of 120–900 kW serve a row each; room-level CDUs of 300–1,400 kW work with a facility loop.