What $1,000,000 of water cooling looks like - Building Shadow's Power Upgrade
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Promos
Thanks to Shadow for sponsoring today's video! Get 20% off the first month of your Shadow PC subscription, with or without the Power Upgrade with code LTT at shdw.me We partnered with Shadow to take a deep dive into how their Power Upgrade is made from assembly to deployment. Come join Luke Lafreniere in exploring OVHcloud's facilities in France and see what happens behind the scenes in a data center that's completely water-cooled! Discuss on the forum: linustechtips.com ► GET MERCH: lttstore.com ► SUPPORT US ON FLOATPLANE: floatplane.com ► AFFILIATES, SPONSORS & REFERRALS: lmg.gg ► PODCAST GEAR: lmg.gg FOLLOW US --------------------------------------------------- Twitter: twitter.com Facebook: @LinusTech Instagram: @linustech TikTok: @linustech Twitch: twitch.tv MUSIC CREDIT --------------------------------------------------- Intro: Laszlo - Supernova Video Link: youtube.com iTunes Download Link: itunes.apple.com Artist Link: soundcloud.com Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High Video Link: youtube.com Listen on Spotify: spoti.fi Artist Link: youtube.com Intro animation by MBarek Abdelwassaa @mbarek_abdel Monitor And Keyboard by vadimmihalkevich / CC BY 4.0 geni.us Mechanical RGB Keyboard by BigBrotherECE / CC BY 4.0 geni.us Mouse Gamer free Model By Oscar Creativo / CC BY 4.0 geni.us CHAPTERS --------------------------------------------------- 0:00 Oh hey, it's Luke! 0:38 What is Shadow? 1:29 OVHcloud's assembly facility 2:29 Putting the Power Upgrade together 6:14 Checking out OVHcloud's massive data center 7:36 How the water cooling works at OVHcloud 8:32 The Monitoring Room 10:16 How the facility is powered 11:08 Trying out the Power Upgrade with Linus
The video begins with Luke Lafreniere traveling to OVHcloud in France to explore Shadow's power upgrade servers and the large scale water cooling that powers OVH’s data centers. Luke explains the concept of Shadow as a high performance personal computer in the cloud, highlighting its use cases from extending the life of older devices to remote work for businesses and even gaming, with performance claims such as 1080p at 240 FPS and 4K at 60 FPS. The tour then dives into the assembly facility where Shadow’s power upgrade components are built, including the disassembly of Nvidia Quadro GPUs, the installation of custom heat sinks and heat pipes, and the careful stacking of GPUs into a “sandwich” with dual risers and a shared cooling solution. He walks through the test station where GPUs, motherboards, RAM, and CPUs are mounted and subjected to load tests, while the room monitors temperatures and verifies cooling performance. The video emphasizes efficiency and in-house design, noting OVH’s own water blocks and the ongoing R&D to optimize cooling for massive server racks. Luke then moves to the external infrastructure, describing the giant water reservoirs, continuous pH monitoring, and dual-pump arrangements that ensure reliable operation. The monitoring room is showcased as a command center for power, weather, incidents, and server health, with teams ready to address any issues as they arise. Finally, the tour covers power delivery, including the main 220,000-volt intake and auxiliary lines and generators capable of one megawatt each, underscoring the scale and resilience of OVH’s data center operations. The segment closes with a hands-on comparison back in the studio, where Shadow is demonstrated on multiple devices including a Raspberry Pi, a laptop, and a tablet, showcasing the cloud gaming and streaming capabilities in practical scenarios while continuing to underscore the robustness of Shadow’s edge-to-cloud ecosystem.
Topics · technology · data_center · infrastructure · cloud_computing
Questions answered
- What is Shadow and what makes it useful for consumers and businesses?
- Shadow is a high performance personal computer in the cloud that lets users run demanding workloads or games remotely, extending the lifespan of older devices by offloading heavy compute tasks to the cloud.
- How is the Shadow power upgrade assembled and tested?
- The upgrade is assembled by stripping stock cooling from GPUs, mounting custom heat sinks and heat pipes to create a GPU sandwich with dual risers, then mounting this into a server chassis for power, RAM, and CPU installation, followed by load testing and monitoring to ensure proper cooling.
- What infrastructure supports OVHcloud’s water cooled data centers?
- OVHcloud relies on in-house designed water blocks, large water reservoirs, continuous pH monitoring, dual-pump configurations, robust monitoring rooms, and substantial electrical infrastructure including high voltage mains and backup generators.