The School has been allocated £2M funding from the University to increase the cooling and power capacity of the Forum server room. This should allow us to add around 60 additional GPU servers.

Completion of the project is expected early Q2 2025 and is starting this month (November).

The project will build a large chiller unit on the north west end on the roof of the Forum, routing substantial pipe work from the roof to the basement server room and installing new electrical switch boards. Seven new chilled racks will be deployed, where cooling is provided direct to the rack rather than the room, in order to reduce power wastage.

The project will deliver 220kW of additional cooling and power to the main Forum server room which is sufficient for around 60 additional GPU servers (each with 8 GPUs). For comparison, we are currently limited to 110kW cooling. It will also deliver the cooling and power infrastructure to add an additional 220kW capacity in the future.


Unfortunately, there will be an impact on occupants of the Forum as the works are undertaken :-

• There will be intermittent (drilling) noise in the area of the Core A riser in the north west stairwell area November to March.
• Meeting room 1.15 will also be unavailable for the duration of the project, as it is being used by the contractors.
• There may be occasional disruption as material is delivered to the corridors in the area of the core A riser (pipework being delivered for the riser).
• The Sound Studios right next to the Server room may also be affected by some noise. Contractors will try to keep disruption to a minimum.

Forum server room capacity project / Computing Systems by is licensed under a