At the datacenter side, it depends on the method of cooling. You can chill the air or the chips directly (or both), doesn't matter, you still need to cool, and that still needs water. The question is, where is the water being used?

- If they use either evaporative cooling or a liquid-cooled heat exchanger, that uses tons of water consistently. This requires less energy (it's mostly passive) so you use more water.

- If they use closed-loop water cooling and/or heat pumps/electric chillers, that uses much less water - at the DC. But it does require more energy to circulate the water, run fans, etc. If you are using more energy, where is the energy coming from? It's coming from power plants, which require... you guessed it... more water (e.g. thermoelectric, hydroelectric, geothermal, concentrated solar). They need water in order to generate the power, and lots of it. Coal, natural gas, nuclear, and concentrated solar, all use steam to generate energy. Nuclear also uses water to cool the reactor. And water is used extensively to extract coal, oil, and natural gas. Geothermal uses water in the ground.

You can't not use a ton of water in one fashion or another. It just depends what method, and on what end the water is used. And the crazy thing is, most new datacenters are being built in places with extremely little water. Guess how that's gonna work out as the planet gets hotter?

I don't know why I got downvoted to hell for stating facts every datacenter architect knows. HN be HN'in.