Hey guys thanks for the valuable input. PH is right by guessing I'm leaning toward a budget watercooling setup; I'm married now and still a student = 0$
one benefit to the student scenario tho is I have access to a machine shop (with CNC) and free materials (like copper blocks), this is partly why I want to do the DIY route (plus I really like designing and fab'n stuff and want more experience doing it).
If I had to choose between noise and performance I'll take less noise. Currently I have an older 939 Opt 165 @ 2.75ghz, 1.35v on air. I believe that switching to water will enable me to go past this point, hopefully to 2.9+ (however getting more of an OC is not as important to me right now as just getting more experience with water cooling and design and fab). But before I put water in this system I'm going to experiment with an older 478 P4 3ghz system that I have (and don't care if I ruin). Eventually I'd like to try and do watercooling for my HTPC to make it real quiet, but that will only happen after I have some experience doing watercooling.
If there are no gains to be had from DIY parts, like saving $ or better performance, then I'm fine buying commercial products, I appreciate the links too.
@Jaydee: Thanks for comments on direct-die watercooling, I saw that you had done it once before with an older socket A processor (with a naked die), but haven't seen it done with modern processors with IHS. I didn't think about pressure on the CPU as a necessary component of efficient cooling, but that makes perfect sense.