Thanks for the advice! I've heard kits are not a good choice. I did a bit of pre-shopping on DangerDen and ended up with about $400 worth of equipment. OUCH! SwiftTech has come recommended more than once so maybe I'll look at that.
A couple more questions if you please.
1. The
BlackIce GTX120 looks like it can be mounted internally in my case since I have a 120mm fan exhaust port on the back. Is that going to be enough to cool the CPU and the GPU? I know the GPU produces a lot of heat. I'd be OK with drilling a couple of holes in the back of the case if I had to in order to mount an external radiator as long as it's relatively invisible from the front.
2. The dual fan systems I've seen that are mounted externally appear to cover the PCI slots at the back. How am I supposed to plug in my monitor, sound, etc?
3. Is a water cooling solution going to successfully reduce the amount of heat my PC puts out or am I barking up the wrong tree? The system I have now keeps all the components well within the system's heat tolerances and it's pretty quiet. It's just out of my personal heat tolerances while sitting next to it.
4. Is water cooling too unreliable for me to really do this? What about monitoring? My air cooling system has monitoring to tell me when fans stop working etc. I'd feel better if there was some kind of monitoring and/or alarm system I could attach to the system.