I would guess, just like most people, that an all-copper block would beat a lexan-topped version of the same block, but this seems more like a hypothesis than a "commonly known fact." I follow watercooling advancements closely, and I can't recall any direct comparisons of a lexan top vs. a copper top. What I'm getting at is that we can't treat something as gospel if it hasn't been substantiated experimentally. Of course, if it has been tested, I take this back.
For spiral blocks, I was referring to ideas like this one:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread....hreadid=172994
I haven't ever seen a true spiral block like that in testing. Yes, I remember the open chamber polyblock and how it got smacked in the procooling roundup, and I remember when the maze-like version of it was tested (with channels just as you mentioned), it did much better. I'm not disputing the fact that surface area is a key part of waterblock design; I'm just saying we shouldn't discount people's ideas if they haven't yet been proved wrong. If newbie water cooler wants to spiral his block and see how it does, I say more power to him. An efficient spiral design is just as good with surface area as any hard-corner channeling. I can't tell from his picture whether he has planned an open chamber design instead of a true spiral. If so, then you're right, it seems doomed to fail, but the idea of a spiral seems fine to me.
dc
ps
A person's post count does not correlate to the quality of their posts. Saying things like "big words for a hot stank" just brings back that arrogance that I was so happy to see was not present in the rest of the post.