Yeah - I thought pretty much the same things, in addition to which, when I started researching water cooling in general, I got a ton of conflicting, and nonsensical advice! As for your concerns:
1: it seems a shame to have that great hardware, and not crank it the extra 15%/30% (GPU/RAM) it's pretty much guaranteed to handle without breathing hard - but it
will make the already loud fans a bit louder...
2: that is certainly an issue, and will probably remain so for a while yet. I got around part of it by using a pair of lowly 3850s, as I neither game, nor do all that much 3-D CAD rendering; I originally did it as I need four monitors (at least) for the work I do, and wanted to keep the power drain down - it worked out great for WC, as, by waiting a while, I was able to pick up a pair of superb, full-coverage Koolance blocks for, like, $55 each (originally
well over a hundred a pop). I spent more than ten years building (CNC and electrical design) and qualifying machine tools, and I have, more than once, used a laser interferometer to compensate a good sized lathe or mill to better than fifty millionths of an inch (at which point you start arguing about one degree variarions between cutting ambient temperature, and CMM room measuring ambient temperature!), as well as have built a car from the ground up:
and
never in my life have I seen as
gorgeous a job of machining! I
seriously debated ordering another, just to mount it on a pedestal and display it as a work of art - and, if anybody
but me
ever saw my computer, I certainly would buy a 'windowed' case side-panel for my Cosmos, just to show them off...
😍 So, anyhow, that's my Koolance ad, and I'm looking forward to fiddling with a set of their (not cheap, either) memory coolers on my next workstation build - but - I don't believe they make a full-coverage block for the 48xx GPUs - they
are coming out with a piece for the new 58xxs, but they seem to have skipped that series - who knows why...
3: I was, initially,
horrified by the very idea that
anyone would introduce
any kind of fluid anywhere into their computer case
on purpose! But I was faced with an otherwise intractable heat problem - the system was designed to move heat, and did it exceptionally well, but it was getting to the point where you could truss up a turkey, and roast it in my bedroom! Once I thought about it, I realized that I had done lots of machinery that used a ton and a half of hydraulic pressure to operate, and did it, regularly, year in and year out, without spilling a drop (I have got some good 'ignorance' stories, though - I took an inertia welder down to a small town in Texas one time, without being aware that the hydraulics had never been run in our plant - nor any of the fittings ever tightened! When I turned the hydraulic pump on for the first time, it 'geysered' hydraulic oil in every direction, including up, where it wetted the forty or so foot ceiling - and I spent the next two months working on it with a steady drip, drip, drip, of oil into my hair six days a week!
), so I figured a few pounds of water pressure should be pretty easy to get a grip on. Most of the BS online, regarding the 'intricacies' of water cooling is pretty much just that - BS! The component selection, and the routing (you want pump->radiator->CPU block - past that - don' matter!), are not that critical. There are only a couple things I'd recommend - a good pump (not big bucks, but solid and dependable), all Tygon tubing, and stainless worm-drive hose-clamps all around. My main complaint during the process was that NewEgg doesn't carry a wide enough selection of WC parts - and all the good suppliers seem to be pretty small companies, that apparently can't afford the inventory cost to have much in stock - stuff seems, regularly and forever, on backorder! I can recommend SideWinder (lowest prices), PC_Performance (widest selection), and Petras (best assortment of 'odd-ball' pieces); and, besides having beautifully worked large pieces, Koolance carries extremely reliable vid-card interconnects, quick-disconnect bayonet fittings, and all manner of 'little bits'...
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