Rittal's has a range of shelf cooling fans that are designed to provide heat dissipation up to 3.2kW for the entire ATCA shelf, even in the event of a single fan failure.

As an additional cooling option the supplier has combined liquid cooling techniques to create systems capable of over 4kW each.

According to Rittal, the liquid cooling package not only provides increased heat removal, but also the option to site the heat exchanger remotely from the rack or even outside the equipment room. This can avoid both noise and heat build-up.

As system clock frequencies increase, in some cases this can be as high as 10GHz, the cooling of ATCA racks will become a more important design issue.

Liquid cooling of ATCA boards via CPU cooling or heat pipe concepts are design approaches which can be considered for the effective cooling of hot spots, ensuring reliable dissipation of up to 70 % of the heat loss.

For more information, see http://www.rittal.co.uk