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bigben2k Have you considered mounting the core on the (non-mobo) side, and ducting air through one or two drive bays? ...
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Yes and no... The way the case is set up, I'm pretty much limited to either the rear at the top of the case on the PSU side (exhaust), or the lower front on the mobo side (intake) Anything else would require lots of surgery, (above and beyond what those two locations require) and / or use of a smaller rad.
I'm also working from the assumption that more fans = more noise, even with quiet fans. Thus I don't want to have seperate sets of fans for cooling the rad and cooling the case if that means more fans total.
Now as I understand some of the other threads, if I get halfway reasonable air flow through the rad, (which is also getting good coolant flow from the high-volume system design) then the air is only going to pick up 1-2 deg. C going through the rad. (remember I'm not doing pelts or other radical cooling, and won't be OC'ing) If I put the rad on the case intake, that means the air going through the case would be only slightly above ambient.
If true, I doubt that 1-2* will make all that much difference in cooling the stuff in the case that isn't WC'd - If there is anything else that gets overly hot, I can always slap another block on it. My pump is rated to do 8gpm into a 14' head, and it's P-Q curve says the volume stays high until the restriction gets over ~10', so I have capacity to spare...)
While the stock case has lots of spaces for additional fans, it only comes with 3 - 80mm intakes on the mobo side and 1 - 120mm exhaust (plus the PSU) on the PSU side. Even sucking through the restriction of an air filter and the rad, I suspect I'd have more volume with the 2 120mm intake fans I proposed in my first message of the thread. I'd maintain positive pressure by either running the exhaust fans slower, or just leaving them off most of the time.
I keep thinking it's almost like a car... The rad on a car warms the air considerably over ambient, but they STILL prefer to run that air over the rest of the engine compartment instead of trying to do seperate flows....
I've basically reached the point of saying that unless someone comes up with a specific reason why I shouldn't, I am going to go with the front mounted rad set up so the intake fans suck through it. It may not be the perfect design from an absolute cooling standpoint, but it is arguably the best use of space, and I suspect it will be only marginally less effective.
Gooserider