The way i see it:
- users want a WC system
- a working system (meaning that it works as intended by the manufacturer)
- low maintenance and practical system (serviceable)
- fully integrated with their existing hardware.
It seems that future adopters of WC are caught between the marketing from the manufacturers, the low noise cliché, the worry that their systems aren´t as good as their neighbours (can we call it "performance"?) and the bling factor.
Things are very mixed up.
The manufacturers have no new (definite) ideas, and so they try to target one product to suit everyone.
The public isn't very demanding, (excluding the Procoolers) so they don't give clear "orientations" that can be used in order to fine-tune a product.
So, without any guidance people use very different parts in order to achieve very different goals escaping from the real objective of a kit as created by the manufacturer.
Right now you can adopt a Tt WC system and swap parts in order to "gain some performance". Is this still low-end/low-noise/or performance at a budget?
The same applies to almost everything in WC.
In my opinion the best attempt so far is the one that Apple did.
Maybe it isn´t the best but reveals a concept and a definite idea how Apple interprets the notion of a WC system.
As for the radiators, known for their volume and their difficult relation with pc cases, one example of a good integration is this one from 1a-cooling.de
Again no performance criteria here.
You can see what it looks like on a Lian-li 6077 case on their web
site . Just srool down and the picture is there.