[bigben2k]

First, let me thank you, psychofunk, for detailing all of this for us all: your perspective on water cooling is probably more common than we'd like to admit.

Science aside, I can tell you that support is going to be limited, because the water cooling scene is still not mainstream, at least not as much as Coca-Cola... What that translates into, is that support might not be what you expect.

To the best of my knowledge, Danger Den and Swiftech's websites are probably the friendliest that you'll encounter. Of course it's not the same as the customer service department at your local Wall-Wart...

Water Cooling is available in many forms, for different audiences. If you're a tinkerer/hobbyest, you'll enjoy water cooling just for the exercise. If on the other hand you're interested in WC in its simplest form, i.e. just water cool it, period, then a kit would probably be your best choice, and you probably don't want to hear that you won't get the same performance levels as the rest of us here. You'll just want to know about how to maintain it, and hope that it's not too involved.

Of course you can be somewhere in the middle: a tinkerer, but not a scientist. That's good. In that case, you probably don't mind building a water cooling system from parts gathered, and you'll enjoy better performance than a kit. What you need is for someone to advise you what to buy.

But it seems to me like you already have the answers, so unless you have a specific question about a particular component, you're good to go, otherwise, ask it.

So you ask about tubing size. If you're in the USA, most blocks here use 1/2", some still use 3/8". You won't really need to worry about either one of those, unless you plan to run a pretty heavy pump and a relatively high flow rate, along the lines of 1.5 gpm (which is my personal "set point" to switch to 1/2", but not substantiated). Of course it's near impossible for you to predict the flow rate you'll end up with, but we can tell you that on average, you can expect to hit 1.0 gpm (ref: overclockers.com).

You also ask about the rad: yes, use a shroud, it's worth it. No, two fans won't make a significant difference and yes, there are other options (ref blower). Yes a double pass is more restrictive, but the flow rate hit you'll take is probably minimal, unless your core is particularly small. BIX look pretty, and fit nicely.

Blocs: you probably want to pick out a good CPU block. See pHaestus reviews: he's got quite a few of them already. You should take a minute and consider why you want to water cool the GPU and NB.

Res/airtrap: it should, ideally, be minimally restrictive. I have yet to see a "bad" one. A common one is the good ole tee in the loop. I made one from scratch (see sig).

The only other advice to give you, goes back to bobkoure's post: state your objectives. Are you looking for an extreme overclock? Some overclock? What about noise? what about portability? The objectives help greatly in picking out WC components.