My canned rant on liquid cooling:
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You buy a liquid cooler to be able to extract an extra multiplier or two out of your OC.
Not gonna happen with CLC's.....a Cryorig R1 will cool better than any CLC. An-all in-one Swiftech H220-X water cooler will cool better than any air cooler.
I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler like a Noctua NH-D15 or phanteks can do the job just as well. A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better, in a well ventilated case.
And... I have read too many tales of woe when a liquid cooler leaks. Google "H100 leak"
Agreed when applied to CLCs. Certainly not true for custom loops and the Swiftech All-In-Ones, though you do pay more, not extraordinarily so.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem. If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to exhaust(which I think is better) , then your cpu cooling will be less effective because it uses pre heated case air.
I know it makes sense in our heads but is easily proven false with a few temp probes and a fog machine. It would cause no problems even if the assumption was true. You could visit any of the serious OC / WC Forums to get a general consensus but I used 6 Bitspower Temp probes accurate to 1/10h of a degree and a Chauvet H700 fog machine to test.
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/10373/ex-tub-620/Bitspower_G_14_Temperature_Sensor_Stop_Fitting_-_Matte_Black_BP-MBWP-CT.html
http://www.chauvetlighting.com/hurricane-700.html
Your computer will run just fine "stock". As you said, the reason you consider liquid cooling is to handle your CPU, and possibly your GPU, overclocks. So let's look at the nice gaming box. Haswell at 4.6 Ghz and twin 780s OC's 25%. What are you buying special cooling for ? In this instance we're talking CPU water cooling..... a much smaller % add GPU blocks and a far smaller % add MoBo blocks..... RAM and other components are extremely rare. So clearly, it's the CPU most are concerned about and for good reason, cause the rest matters little. I can get the same GFX card OCs (excluding the wild cards like Lightning and Classy) on air as water ..... water will be quieter and cooler but OC won't be affected w/ today's cards.
That OC'd Haswell produces a mere 130 watts, the two GPUs close to 600..... Your "better" way has 600 watts of heated air being pulled up thru your radiator, immensely reducing the effectiveness of that top rad. So your radiator is trying to dissipate 130 watts of CPU heat but is handcuffed by 600 watts of GPU heat. What's better ?
a) To have 600 watts of heat heating up a 130 watt cooling system .... a 462 % impact, or
b) To have 130 watts of heat heating up a 600 watt cooling system ..... a 22 % impact,
We'll see in a bit why the 22% impact of b) actually doesn't happen.
With 2 front fans and a side or bottom fan blowing in / rear fan and 2 rad fans blowing out, you have 3 fans in and 3 fans out ... rear grille does essentially nothing. So with 1/3 of the heat from the GFX cards getting sucked out the rear fan, we are left with 2/3 of that 600 watts, or 400 watts of GPU heat is going up thru the rads.
Because the air being used to cool the coolant has been preheated by 400 watts if GFX card heat (ignoring all other components as they are offset by the small amount of heat that escapes thru the card slot grille) it is very close to the temp of the coolant itself. Therefore very little heat exchange actually takes place since that exchange is dependent upon the delta T of their air and the water...... Now take cool outside air and push that thru the rads and the coolant and cooling air have a vastly greater delta T, so the CPU will be cooled to a much lower temperature.
Looking at your case components, you were worried about the extra heat from the radiator exhaust air so lets look at that 23C air in with 130 watt load is going to raise that air temp by 1-3C tops. Exactly what effect will 26C air have on your HD, MoBo and other components. Your 45C MoBo will go from a (45 - 23) delta T to (45-25) .... will it go from 45 to 46, maybe 47 ? If it does, is that a concern ? It's no where near the thermal limit of the component in question so what's the concern.... If HD surface temp goes from from 28C to 30C is that a concern even if it did happen ?
It doesn't tho and here's why. With the previously described fan arrangement, but rad rand taking cool outside air and blowing in you now have 5 fans blowing in and 1 blowing out meaning ya have 4 fans worth of air going out the rear grille. That means:
a) The air from the radiator never gets to the other components, it's going out the rear grille before it get past the rear fan and about half way down the grille to the video cards. The HDs, SSDs, Optical all are being cooled by fresh ambient air cause all the hot air has no place to exit but the rear. You'll oft hear what peeps learned in 8th grade science "Heat Rises" ..... no, not in a house in the presence of ceiling fans it don't.... and not with two fans (or 4 in push / pill used) pushing it down
b) As for the MoBo, I'd use a Swiftech H220-X which easily allows me to cool a MoBo Block but even air cooled, modern MoBos operates at such low temps there is just no reason to care whether it's 41 or 43 or 45....or even 65.
c) You don't have 400 watts of GPU heat, plus all that of your other components going thru your radiator which is trying to cool a 130 watts CPU operating very close to the thermal limit you have set.
In my tests, the fog machine test, clearly show that air coming thru the top rad never gets near the GFX cards and other components, it's all going out the rear. The water and air temp probes clearly show lower CPU and Coolant temperatures using 23C air instead of 28C air for cooling.
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