Vivold Consulting
Business & Enterprise

Will Macquarie's New Data Centre Meet Australia's AI Demand?

Macquarie's IC3 Super West bets on liquid-cooled, high-density capacity for AI GPU clusters

Key Insights

Macquarie Data Centres' IC3 Super West facility in Sydney is designed to deliver high-density, liquid-cooled capacity tailored to AI GPU workloads. Due for completion in 2026, it targets customers needing massive, power-hungry clusters without sacrificing efficiency or reliability. The project reflects how specialised AI data centres are diverging from traditional enterprise designs.

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Build data centres that actually match AI workloads

The article outlines how IC3 Super West has been engineered with AI as a first-class design constraint, not an afterthought retrofitted onto legacy halls.

High-density, liquid-cooled design for GPU-heavy racks

  • The facility is architected to support extreme rack densities required by modern GPU clusters, with liquid cooling to keep thermal envelopes under control.
  • Power and cooling topologies are tuned to avoid the usual trade-off where dense AI racks force operators to derate capacity or accept higher failure risk.

Positioning Australia in the regional AI race


  • For Australia, IC3 Super West is framed as a strategic asset, enabling local AI training and inference instead of exporting demand offshore.

  • That has implications for latency-sensitive applications, data sovereignty and national resilience.

Takeaways for infra and cloud strategy


This build is part of a broader pattern: next-generation AI data centres look less like generic colocation and more like specialised industrial plants. CIOs and cloud buyers should be probing whether their current providers actually offer AI-appropriate power, cooling and interconnects, or just traditional enterprise facilities with an AI marketing layer.

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