Water Cooling Kits & Components

[Capper]

There is a huge selection of water cooling kits on the market. From small, pre-packaged kits and external enclosures to high end advanced setups, just about everything has been done and is available. I spent a lot of time looking for different components and kits, but everywhere I looked and the more I saw, the more I just got confused. I wanted to make a list, basically a lot of good water cooling options, to help others who wanted to take the plunge into exotic cooling. The following lists are in no particular order, and the links take you to the manufacturer's web sites and/or specs page for their products. This is by no means a complete list..

External Water Cooling Kits
Thermaltake
Koolance
Corsair
Xice
Zalman

Drive Bay Kits
Cooler Master
Kingwin
Evercool

Internal Kits
Globalwin
Asetek
Swiftech
Innovatech
Topspeed 3X
Danger Den

Do It Yourself Water Cooling Kit
I posted a bunch of links directed at those people who wanted to get their feet wet, so to speak, in exotic cooling. Pre-fabricated kits are a good entry level project, very easy, very basic, and come with everything you need, but good enough to provide adequate results for overclocking your system.
You can achieve much better results by building your own kit from various parts, and at a better cost than most kits. One thing to keep in mind is that as far as tube diameter, bigger tends to be better (within reason). Systems range from ¼ to ½ inch (inside diameter). The reason that bigger tends to be better is that the whole goal is for the water to move the heat away from the block, the faster it does this, the cooler your system. To maximize the cooling, stick with the same size throughout your system (!/2 I/D tube and 1/2 connectors...etc)

Pumps
From what I can gather, the standard on pumps is 300 GPH with 5-6 ft of head pressure, or 150 GPH with at least 11 ft of head pressure. There are a ton of pumps out there, so I will link those that I find having generally good reviews and high usage.
Danner Mag 2 and 3
Swiftech mcp600
Danger Den DD12V-D4
Eheim 1250 and 1048
Hydor L 20, 25, and 30
AquaXtreme 50Z

CPU Blocks
A lot of very good choices here. A wide variety of designs but all of these are very good performers, not according to reviews, but to the people who use them.


Chipset Blocks
A lot of people leave their chipset out of the W/C equation. Some feel that the location in reference to the CPU block tends to crimp the tubing (usually only a problem with ½ tubing). My thoughts are if you have good active cooling on your chipset, you might be able to skip the chipset block, but it all depends on your system and your goals.

GPU Blocks
A very important part of the cooling solution, especially considering the stock coolers that usually come with video cards. I personally feel that not only should you use a good cooler for the GPU, but also put some heat sinks on the memory chips. Tweak Monster and OCZ make some very good heat sinks, mixed with some AS Alumina Epoxy, your memory chips should stay adequately cool.
Silverprop
Danger Den
Swiftech
Koolance
Innovatek
PolarFlo
Asetek
OC Labs
D-Tek

Radiators
There is currently a lot of debate in regards to the radiator. A lot of people believe a good radiator is as important as a good pump, a lot of people believe that like pumps, once radiators meet a certain standard, there isn't much difference in the effect on performance. In the end common sense says the larger the radiator, the better the cooling, but remember that larger radiator size means you'll need a stronger pump, and a system with as little pressure drop as possible overall.
This is too vague to break down, so I'll list a couple of links to major distributors of radiators.
Xoxide
Danger Den
D-Tek
Frozen CPU

Keep in mind that the new trend is to use the heater cores from older cars. I have been told that the heatercores from a 77 Booneville and an 86 chevette work very well, and can be purchased fairly cheap at auto part stores, but both will need some modifications, one barb is ½ inch, the other ¾ or 5/8.

Tubing
Tubing is totally personal preference and ranges from very cheap tubing found at your local hardware store, to very expensive tubing like Tygon. Whatever you choose remember that you want flexibility, but you also want tubing that won’t kink at the slightest turn. I would recommend something like the coolsleeves from Swiftech These seem to be a great idea to prevent kinks. Also remember that bigger is better…. ½ inch tubing will provide much better results than ¼ or 3/8 inch tubing, just remember to keep the sizes consistent throughout your system, stick with all 1/2 or 3/8 inch to minimize problems such as pressure drop.


Additives
Don't use Anti-Freeze, unless you are using a water chiller that drops the water temps below freezing. Anti-Freeze is extremely hard on both the pump and tubing.
Two excellent pieces from Overclockers.com
Watercooling chemistry Part 1
Watercooling Chemistry Part 2