Thus, to overcome the difficulties noted above, examples described herein provide a user-friendly and leak-free liquid cooling solution for cooling pluggable modules without requiring blind-mate liquid connectors. The example systems described herein include liquid-cooled cold plates that are fixed inside bays of the system that receive the pluggable modules. Each cold plate is held by a rotating support above the spot where a pluggable module would be located when the module is installed, and is connected to a liquid cooling loop of the system. The rotating support is connected to an engagement mechanism that, when actuated, causes the rotating support to pivot downward or upward (depending on which way the engagement mechanism is actuated). In particular, actuating the engagement mechanism when the pluggable module is in the bay causes the cold plate to move into contact with a thermal interface of the pluggable module, thereby enabling the cold plate to cool the module. Similarly, actuating the engagement mechanism in an opposite direction causes the cold plate to disengage from the pluggable module so that the module can be removed from the system.

In some example systems disclosed herein, the actuating of the engagement mechanism to engage the cold plate occurs completely automatically in response to the insertion of the pluggable module, and the actuating of the engagement mechanism to disengage the cold plate requires only a simple eject command (e.g., button push). For example, the engagement mechanism may include an electronic actuator that automatically actuates the engagement mechanism in the manner noted above.

In some example systems disclosed herein, the user may manually actuate the engagement mechanism. For example, the engagement mechanism may include a lever that a user can manually move to actuate the engagement mechanism.