Apparently data centers routinely burn through water at a rate of about 1.9 liters per KWh of energy spent computing. Yet I can 🎮 HARDCORE GAME 🎮 on my hundreds-of-watts GPU for several hours, without pouring any of my Mountain Dew into the computer? Even if the PC is water cooled, the water cooling water stays in the computer, except for exceptional circumstances.
Meanwhile, water comes out of my A/C unit and makes the ground around it all muddy.
How am I running circles around the water efficiency of a huge AI data center, with an overall negative water consumption?
What I don’t get is how the water is “consumed”, it’s not like it’s gone right? It evaporates and then just comes back down as rain surely?
Same with water consumption of a sweater or a steak.
There probably is some good reason for measuring it like that but conceptually I don’t get it.
Just cause you use water in one place doesn’t mean it’ll come back in the same place.
It does though doesn’t it
To add to what others said, it’s a tradeoff.
Your gaming PC not only runs up your electric bill from the wall, but the AC as well. It has to work to get all that heat out.
This is the equivalent of water cooling your PC, and piping it to a hot tub outside. It would heat it and evaporate water faster, but it’s basically free and uses basically no electricity.
That’s the tradeoff. It’s water evaporation instead of heat pumps. It’s trading water usage for lots of electricity usage, which in some cases, is well worth it.
And what if you live in a cold climate, you say? Well, evaporative cooling is most cost efficient in hot and (ironically) dry climates.
Server farms use water to cool computers, it’s like water called computers but on a bigger scale
Aircons condense water from the atmosphere the same way water on your shower mirror happens because the mirror is colder than the fog
If you’re familiar with condensation and the rain cycle it should help you understand further
