I get your point about the heatercore in a 5.25 bay, but how would I cool it? Mounting fans in the front is a no-no, as I want a perfectly clean exterior. As for placing one below the HD cage....how thick is a heatercore? There's hardly any room down there... And again, how would I cool it? Mounting fans on it would be next to pointless unless I wanted to cut open the case.
I'm aware that there's not much room to worh with, which is exactly why I want the H2O-8500 (having said that, I see that I've been a bit too conservative with that shading - there's a little more room to play with). I can fit a total of 4 Black Ice Micros if I need to in order to attain decent cooling, but it would be handy to have a few opinions on their effect on the flowrate before actually buying any extra ones. Cost, btw, is not particularly an issue.
If you're thinking of rounded cables, I've already got a casefull of them. With 8 HDs, 2 opticals and a floppy, there's not much room to spare, rounded or not rounded.
It's not that I think they are extreme ideas, only that they appear to entail things I don't want to do. If I wanted to cut holes or otherwise modify the case, I'd do it without a second thought - I just don't want to...
Nothing wrong with being a bit argumentative by the way...
Agrippa