The difficulty lies in the eye of the beholder, true!
To me, not difficult means I can go to the Home Depot and/or Autozone on my way home to pick up parts. Plus, you mention $200 for your copper system. I spent:
Heatercore: $20
Barbs: $6
Epoxy: $2
Aluminum home-made Xjinn block: $0
Vinyl tubing: $3
Distilled water: $1
Water wetter: $5
Eheim pump (used 1250): $50 (I think)
2 120mm fans: $4
Fan control circuit (discrete parts and solder): $10
Total: $101
That doesn't include all the crud that I bought because I didn't know what I was doing, nor does it include the costs of the tools that I bought. I got lucky by getting chunks of aluminum stock that I could drill and put onto the CNC at work, too.
Also, I'd buy better stuff if I knew better. Replace the vinyl tubing with tygon. Replace the aluminum block with copper. Etc...
With regular maintenance such as system flushes, my system will do just fine. It just doesn't happen to be as good as possible.
For someone interested in buying rather than fabricating it, yeah, go with a copper radiator. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to save thirty or so US dollars. That money went towards tools, books and other misc parts (e.g. I spent over $250 on electronics books, tools and parts when doing my PWM fan control circuit). Cheap education/expensive system cost.
Many are the paths that we take, and it really depends upon your available resources and intended goals.
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