[pHaestus]

Yesterday I took the water cooling out of my Lian Li PC-50 and replaced it with a Zalman 7700CU heatsink. I did this so that I could leave that system running while I rebuilt my water cooling in a GTower Server case. But I noticed (the whole family noticed) that the system was roughly 100000x quieter with the Zalman than with my water cooling.

I don't normally high end + low noise air cooling and so I just haven't had a lot of experience with these coolers. But immediately it occurred to me that I am getting lower noise, better mobo/VRM cooling, and MUCH lower cost than any water cooling setup I've used. So then I began wondering:

"Is it possible to build a water cooling setup that outperforms a GOOD quiet heatsink at the same noise levels using commercial parts?"

Outperform is (relatively) easy but achieving that performance at really low noise levels is (let's be honest) not trivial.

I have an assload of water cooling parts in my basement AND a couple of cases to put them into. What parts would you choose? What suggestions on layout/design/etc would you make? Do you already have a system you think is clearly better than any air cooler and quieter too? List out the parts and design process and I'll compare them.