[HAL-9000]

I always thought a good product evolution for mainstream watercooling would be an integration of the pump and the radiator.

It would work something like this: You would have a common motor for both the radiator fan and the pump. A small plastic gearbox would adjust the RPM difference between fan and impeller for optimum efficiency of both. The pump (and motor) itself would be housed in the dead-space of the fan's hub. A spiraled tubular"ring" would cascade out of the pump through concentric copper fins directly behind the fan blades. This would provide a radiator with no right angles to flow, reducing resistance within the radiator. Inlet would be at the front, outlet would loop back around through the fan housing of the gadget. When I think of this thing, I think of a unit sized for a 120mm fan housing.

The advantage would be if you did this, and integrated the actual resevoir into a compartment either as part of the radiator/pump or the waterblock; it would reduce the "kit" to two components. The 120mm form factor would make it ready to go into anything ranging from a 120mm fan housing to a replacement for a Shuttle XPC heat-pipe setup. OEM's like Alienware would dig it because it would be potentially higher performane, and far simpler, than a Koolance. All kinds of ancilliary costs would be reduced. You only need one housing, not two. You need only one motor, not two, one pair of tubing, not two pairs...etc. If you wanted performance, you could crank the motor, increasing both the pumping capacity and the radiator's fan speed with a simple potentiometer. Just an idea...