U.S. voters passed 40 ballot measures putting limits on AI data centers this week, as huge 1GW AI data centers from OpenAI, Meta, SpaceXAI, Amazon, Google and more push up water and power bills and put a strain on local resources. One of the issues that continues to come up is water usage, which is needed to cool the GPUs inside data centers running AI workloads. Closed-loop liquid cooling keeps water use low inside many modern AI data centers, but external cooling is still needed to move heat outside of the buildings and that requires large amounts of power or water in hot climates. CNBC visited data centers and spoke to researchers to find out the truth about how data centers use water.
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The Less Water Data Centers Use, The More Power They Consume. Here’s Why
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