We could approach the question from the "water" angle: How much heat can water take away?
The CPU emits a varying amount of heat. Optimally, all of that heat would be taken away, but of course it's not feasible, or at least not practical to do it that way. Imagine the required size of the radiator to cool the water back down to ambient!
The limit that we're trying to break though, is how much heat energy we can extract from the CPU core. This must be the most significant barrier to the cooling solution, and I come to that conclusion from seeing many people having varying results, strictly from improving the TIM joint.
Once a good TIM joint is made, the next step is to optimize the heat transfer to the fluid. Fins are the obvious answer, turbulent flow is the necessarily added factor. The combination of both should get us pretty close, as Cathar has demonstrated.
I think the real question here is: how come there's no single answer? How come there is not a single design that is standard, and technically proven to be optimal, beyond all others?
Part of the answer lies in the heat source, and its spread pattern, IMO.
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