The heat's going to be leaving the building in liquid-filled pipes, however you architect it. And with 1.7MW of peak power consumption, a nontrivial amount of liquid.
It's just a question of whether you want to add air and refrigerant into the mix.
It seems they're decommissioning it partly due to "faulty quick disconnects causing water spray" though, so an air cooling stage would have had its benefits...
> The heat's going to be leaving the building in liquid-filled pipes
In the right climate, and the right power density, you can use outside air for cooling, at least part of the time. Unlikely at this scale of machine, but there was a lot of work towards datacenter siting in the 2010s to find places were ambient cooling would significantly reduce the power needed to operate.
It's just a question of whether you want to add air and refrigerant into the mix.
It seems they're decommissioning it partly due to "faulty quick disconnects causing water spray" though, so an air cooling stage would have had its benefits...