Susana SchwartzCopper above $6/pound, inflating CapEx for data centers
Record-high copper prices of $6.60 per pound (as of publishing) will further accelerate the architectural transition from copper to fiber, as well as higher-voltage power delivery. Increasingly, data center architects will substitute copper with fiber optics in rack-to-rack interconnects, across the data center floor, and between facilities.
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Copper will remain king for electrical power delivery and thermal cooling, with engineers working to reduce the volume of per-MW copper using 800V DC platforms that double the voltage and drop the required electrical current (with the same gauge of wire carrying as much as 157% more power). Some assert that 800V DC power architectures can cut overall copper mass requirements by 45% to 60% per MW.
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Additionally, architects and engineers are expected to replace more copper with aluminum in places where physical size might be less of an issue, like the outside of server rooms, which would help reserve high-purity copper for only for density-critical applications inside the server chassis.
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
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