A system and method for evaluating equipment in a data center is disclosed, hi one aspect, a method includes receiving parameters for equipment in the data center, the parameters including information descriptive of mass of the equipment, calculating an idealized thermal mass of the equipment based on the received parameters, calculating a temperature associated with the equipment at a first time period of a plurality of time periods based on the idealized thermal mass, and calculating a temperature for each subsequent time period of the plurality of time periods based on the idealized thermal mass and the temperature at a previous time period of the plurality of time periods.