Many good topics have been spoken about.
I must agree with those that wonder of those stating the reliability of watercooling. My previous watercooling experiment is over 5 years old (the coolant from my first system, 7-8 years old), I dont use it everyday, its had ample time to sit around and rot quite a bit, never done any maitenance on it... Still chugging fine. Reliability, in my opinion, is fine. Plastics and tubing have never degraded for me.
I must agree with most of everyones comments as to why watercooling has lost its alure. For the past couple years I have been on a laptop and perfectly fine.
Though I must remember why I watercooled in the first place. I too started back when dangerden and dtekcustoms didn't even exist, started with overclockwatercool for me (oh mayn! it took me 5 minutes trying to remember it!).. its for the fun of it all. There were great performance gains back in the day, but sound and "coolness" still always availled. The impossibility of trying to explain watercooling to those eager eyes
It's for the fun of it all!
Right now I am thinking up a small custom mini rig. There is something about mixing just the right % of coolant, turning the pump on for the first time, watching the water cycle, letting it sit for a day or two for leaks(or often times just saying screw it and jumping in), tinkering with tubing, seeing how quiet you can make the fans and still get away with it... This is why I still wanna do it... It's fun! I hope we can look at the differences in market while still remembering what it is that brought us all into the hobby... It's fun! MUCH more fun then simply plugging everything in and shutting the case ya?
(for those wondering who I am, I am what you call the occational lurker of 7 years, when procooling didn't have a forum hehe... )
Have a great day