NVIDIA GB200 NVL72
The GB200 NVL72 is a liquid cooled, 48U rack that wires 72 Blackwell B200 GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs into a single NVLink domain, so software addresses one accelerator with a 13.4 TB HBM3e pool instead of 36 separate servers stitched together over InfiniBand. It targets teams training or serving frontier scale models that need that pool at NVLink speed rather than sharded across PCIe or network hops. Hosting one draws 125 kW to 135 kW of continuous IT load through direct to chip liquid cooling with zero rack fans, a facility class that only purpose built AI data centers and a small number of retrofitted colocation halls can deliver today.
- 125 to 135 kW of continuous, liquid cooled load per rack is well outside what most enterprise data centers can deliver; a large majority of existing halls top out around 40 to 60 kW per rack on air cooling alone.
- The rack's point load (reported near 1,875 kg per square meter) exceeds standard raised floor ratings, so slab on grade installation or floor reinforcement is a real line item, not a footnote, in any facility budget.
- Zero rack fans means every watt of GPU, CPU, NVLink switch, and PSU heat lands on the facility water loop; a chiller or cooling tower undersized for this delta will throttle the whole rack, not just the hot node.
- For teams that cannot host 120 kW plus liquid cooled racks, a fleet of air cooled 8-GPU HGX B200 servers remains the realistic near term alternative, at the cost of losing the single NVLink domain across all 72 GPUs.
- Treat the 13.4 TB NVLink-domain memory figure as the actual reason to buy this system over a cluster of smaller nodes: it is what lets very large models live in one coherent address space instead of being sharded across a slower network fabric.
How much does a GB200 NVL72 cost?
Reported figures cluster around $2.8M to $3.4M per rack, with an HSBC analyst estimate near $3M for a training class configuration. NVIDIA does not publish an official price; actual cost depends on the OEM, networking, storage, and support contract.
What power does a GB200 NVL72 rack need?
Operating power is reported at 125 kW to 135 kW continuous, with peak or transient draw reported as high as 192 kW by at least one OEM. That is delivered as 480V three phase into 8 power shelves feeding a fully liquid cooled compute path.
Can a normal data center host a GB200 NVL72?
Not without significant upgrades. Most colocation and enterprise facilities are built for 40 to 60 kW air cooled racks; this system needs a facility chilled water loop, reinforced or slab on grade flooring for its concentrated weight, and 480V distribution most legacy halls do not have.
Is GB200 NVL72 still current, or has GB300 replaced it?
Both are shipping. GB200 NVL72 remains in production and is deployed at CoreWeave, Oracle, Microsoft, and other hyperscalers; GB300 NVL72 is the newer Blackwell Ultra generation with more memory per GPU and higher FP4 throughput, sold alongside GB200 rather than as an immediate replacement.