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Originally Posted by Tempus
One other factor is the maintenance or "dust bunny X-factor."
I work in enterprise IT and I occassionally let users bring home PCs in to get some help (we offer that as incentive to get them to do the home-office thing.) Most of these people have older PCs (P3\500-P3\800s being the norm right now.) On average, these cases have never been cracked. There is a LOAD of dust bunnies gumming things up. Most of the intake and exhust fans are absolutely coated. I've had to replace cpu HSF for the same reason - they burned the motors out due to the dust and grime.
Fast forward to a more modern machine after 3-5 yrs of dust with no cleaning. What will happen once those nice copper heatsinks get full of insulating dust and the fans stop spinning so well because a 3" dust bunny jumped in there. Not to mention the front intake grill is completely covered over with pet hair and dust.
This is where watercooling COULD make a deeper penetration.
W/Cing is not ever going to be as cheap as a $70 HSF, regardless of the economy of scales being brought to bear. But, we should be able to see something under $150 if/when major names start playing around and shipping 1000s of units.
Noise and reliability will drive consumers to demand a change from traditional air cooling. Modern processors (both cpu and gpu) will be far less forgiving in a dusty home.
I don't think you will ever see a day when mass-market KITS become a big item. Mass-market people do NOT want to open their computers, much less remove and add things to the cpu.
High-end enthusiasts will continue to migrate at an increasing rate. One big reason is the trend to SFF. With SFF, the heat density increases very quickly, fresh air (and unobstructed airways) becomes harder to get, and the coolness factor of WC will all combine to make it the premier choice. That day is probably 18-24 months away - less if Nvidia's SLI takes hold and the extra heat load really starts to push the serious games into WCing. Have you see how close those cards are? Talk about no air flow.
/rant
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I know what you're talking about. Back in the dark days of my phone-tech support career I supported HP Pavillions. There was actually a fail code in the Peoplesoft database for repairs that was listed for "infestation." Sometimes cockroaches would move in because it was warm and dark. Cockroaches gum up fans and CD-ROMs when they hop on for a spin....eeeew.