Server power densities are foreseen to increase, and conventional air-cooling systems will struggle to cope with thermal demand. Single-phase immersion systems are a promising alternative to operate very intensive workload such as high-performance computing, cryptocurrencies mining or research activities. However, few companies deal with this kind of system and there is a lack of energy models that can reproduce an accurate analysis of the system behaviour. This study addresses the experimentation, data collection, and model validation of a single-phase immersion cooling system where 54 open compute project servers, each with a peak power of 400 Watts that are submerged and operated in a dielectric coolant. Results show the evolution of the thermal profile of the system under static and dynamic workloads, and it provides a correlation of server energy use under various system temperatures. The energy model is presented, validated against real data, and exploited to investigate the system response to different cooling conditions. In conclusion, the study demonstrates the validation of the energy model and supports the basis for further investigation. © 2023 The Authors