Antec 1200 Q9650 Water Cooling ?'s

[Nater]

If you're wanting to keep it all internal, you probably don't have the best case for that. I suppose you could take out that ridiculously large fan at the top and do something with a 120x3 radiator up there, or in the front of the case behind the 5.25" bays, but that is about it. When it comes to water cooling, the case is the most important part. Unless of course you want some ghetto/redneck setup where it is bolted to the back or top of the case. I'm not big on that.

Have you considered just simply getting a better heatsink and fan? Something like the Thermalright Ultra Extreme or the Prolimatech Megahalems? What about an LCLC setup like the H50 from Corsair? It supposedly is a couple degrees C better than any air cooler and will be quieter. It only looks like you're interested in cooling your CPU, so that might be a good way to go.

Building a serious liquid cooling setup takes a lot of time, money, and work. As I said before the case is the most important part of that by far. Assuming you're like me and think that the MountainMods cube cases are hideous, your best choices are the Silverstone TJ07 and Lian Li's PC-V2x00 cases.

If you want to do that, remember a couple things. Thermochill, Feser, Swiftech for radiators and if you're just doing the CPU make sure it's at least a 120x2. The Heatkiller is the best CPU block right now, I've never been a fan of Swiftech's CPU blocks and I've owned a couple. Tubing size really doesn't matter, going from 1/2" id to 1/4" id tubing barely affects the c/w of a water cooling system at all. You're maybe talking half of a degree C in the worst case scenarios, it's not the 5*C that forum people might have you believe.

Oh, and if you're going for 4GHz on a 45nm multi-die quad, really watch those GTL reference values.