News Categories

A CDU, or Cooling Distribution Unit, transfers heat from one fluid source to another in a controlled manner, and it is far more than a heat exchange terminal: it integrates pumps and control components for precise regulation. It lets users build separate cooling loops while isolating fluid differences. The primary Facility Water System (FWS) is separated from the secondary Technology Cooling System (TCS), which is customized for compute, and the heat exchanger boundary decouples the pressure and temperature regimes of the two sides. With AI accelerator GPUs spreading fast, air cooling alone can no longer cool high-power racks, and most data centers will combine liquid and air cooling, which is where a high density rack air liquid CDU strategy becomes the practical answer.

Inspur Information disclosed a 2026 private placement of up to RMB 9 billion, with RMB 1.4 billion going to a liquid-cooled native computing infrastructure project, and on the same day Jiangsu Leili revealed its rack-mounted CDU liquid cooling canned pumps are in mass production in seven power specs. One is a server OEM, the other a precision parts maker, and both are pouring into the same link on the same day: the CDU, the race to become the next liquid distribution unit CDU supplier of scale.

As data centers accelerate toward high density and high power, liquid cooling has become the decisive thermal solution, and at its center sits the CDU, or Coolant Distribution Unit. The liquid cooling distribution unit is the indispensable equipment unit of the system, responsible for distributing coolant evenly, regulating temperature, controlling pressure and adapting flow, and its operating stability decides the cooling efficiency of servers and the life of the whole system.

As data centers transition from air cooling to liquid cooling to meet rising power and cooling demands, the cooling distribution unit (CDU) has become a necessity for managing the enormous heat load of high-performance servers, especially in AI and HPC environments. Choosing the right server air liquid CDU unit, or deciding when to move from air to liquid at all, is now the first design decision for any new deployment.

A CDU is not a big pump with a tank; it is a miniature cooling station with seven functional departments packed into one rack: heat exchange, power, pressure stabilization, refill, purification, regulation and control. It comes in three bodies with the same organs: rack-type at 30 to 100kW in 2U to 12U units for single or adjacent racks and edge sites, row-type at 200kW to 1MW for 4 to 16 racks, the standard for new intelligent computing centers, and centralized units above 1MW for whole floors or buildings. Only capacity, quantity and redundancy differ. The GPU cabinet air liquid CDU is the rack-type member of this family.

Liquid cooling pipe welding fails most often because skilled welders cannot be replicated. A ten-year master produces perfect φ57 joints blindfolded, yet only about 25 joints a day; overtime shakes his hands by nightfall, penetration goes unstable, and NDT ends in rework. Ten masters of equal level are not an option: certified welders are scarce, each costs 200,000 yuan a year, and each hand differs, so bead width, penetration and back-side color vary from person to person. Manual welding has a high ceiling and a low floor with no stability; automatic welding has a lower ceiling but an extremely high floor, every joint identical. For AI data center liquid cooling piping with large batches and unified standards, the floor matters more than the ceiling.

Material is the first step of manifold manufacturing. Copper, aluminum and 304 or 316L stainless steel are the common options, and for liquid cooling systems with high reliability, corrosion resistance and long-run requirements, 316L is usually the stronger candidate. The cold plate liquid manifold distributes and recovers coolant rather than directly carrying chip heat exchange the way a cold plate does; copper conducts heat well, yet on the manifold the corrosion resistance, stability and compatibility with other system materials outweigh high thermal conductivity.

Liquid cooling is a certain market, yet gains will not be shared evenly; profit goes to the parts that can least afford failure, hardest to certify and most decisive for system efficiency. Cold plates, quick connectors, manifolds, CDUs, plate heat exchangers, pumps, valves, sensors, coolant and leak detection form seven invisible thresholds, and the GPU cabinet air liquid CDU is one member of that chain. Liquid cooling is not moving water into racks but keeping thousands of connection points leak-free for years, flow uniform and chips never overheated; it is a reliability business, not an HVAC business.

The CDU plays the role the heart plays in the body: it produces no cold, but without it the coolant never moves and the system is stagnant. A perfect cold plate and an expensive coolant mean nothing if the CDU is wrong; insufficient flow, weak heat exchange or failed control idles the whole system. That is the first test a CDU liquid cooling manufacturer must pass. The Coolant Distribution Unit delivers coolant at the required flow, temperature and pressure to every node and returns the heat-loaded liquid for rejection.

Rising AI GPU power is moving liquid cooling from the question of whether it can cool to the question of whether it can cool precisely. In the thermal management chain from GPU through TIM and cold plate to manifold, CDU and facility loop, the manifold carries no major heat exchange yet decides whether coolant reaches every position as it should; the cold plate exchanges heat, the manifold delivers the coolant to the right places. The data center air liquid CDU sits at one end of that chain, the manifold at the other, and precision depends on both.