Lenovo NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 Rack Scale AI — Rack Power & Cooling Spec

Summary

Vendor product guide (Lenovo Press, doc updated 2026-07-15) for the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 rack-scale system. This is the first primary vendor datasheet in the datacenters KB and it fills the topic's oldest unfilled knowledge gap: kW per rack for GB200/GB300 NVL72, absent across the prior 13 sources. Vendor product guides are technical-report-tier: primary for the hardware spec, but a vendor document (not independent).

Key figures (as-of doc date 2026-07-15)

Rack power

• Rack TDP: 135 kW (nominal thermal design power)
• Peak power: up to ~155 kW ("depending on workload and EDP behavior")
• Power delivery: 50V DC rail (47.5–51.5V operating range)
• Power shelves: 6 or 8 units @ 33 kW each → 198 kW or 264 kW installed shelf capacity (headroom above the 135 kW nominal)
• Bus bar: single 1400A rated (rear-center); input options 200–480V AC three-phase; 60A IEC60309 whips per shelf

Compute per rack

• 72 × NVIDIA B300 GPUs (Blackwell Ultra), 186 GB HBM3e per GPU
• 36 × NVIDIA Grace CPUs (72 Arm Neoverse V2 cores each)

Cooling

• ~90% liquid / ~10% air heat capture at the rack
• Liquid-cooled: CPUs, GPUs, HBM, NVSwitch, ConnectX-8 NICs
• Air-cooled: OSFP modules, storage drives, power-distribution components
• Coolant flow 59–177 LPM depending on inlet temp; water operating range 2°C–50°C
• (CDU cooling capacity in kW not stated in this Lenovo doc; a separate search result gave in-row CDU ~1.3 MW supporting up to 8 racks — not from this source, treat as unverified.)

On-thesis relevance

This is the physical unit that everything upstream (CoWoS packaging, HBM, power) and downstream (grid interconnect, $/MW) is denominated against. At 135 kW/rack nominal (155 kW peak), a single NVL72 rack draws roughly 18–19× a legacy ~7 kW enterprise rack, which is why the buildout is power-bound and why air cooling breaks down at rack scale (the 90/10 liquid split). Cross-check: the KB's rack-power-density concept and the NVIDIA/DOE supply-chain re-rate both hinged on this number being absent — it is now sourced.

Provenance / caveats

• Vendor document — authoritative for the spec, not independent. Cross-vendor corroboration (from search, not ingested): HPE QuickSpecs cited 132–140 kW with EDPp provisioning guidance up to 192 kW; the Lenovo figure of 135 kW TDP / 155 kW peak sits inside that band.
• "Peak up to 155 kW" is a ceiling, not a sustained draw — facility provisioning (HPE suggested ~192 kW busway) runs above nameplate for EDPp headroom.

Source: Lenovo NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 Rack Scale AI Product Guide, Lenovo Press, updated 2026-07-15.