I have no experience nor have I read much about the ASUS NB waterblock.
japps2, here is what I tell anyone who is just getting into watercooling: The biggest influence will probably be your o'clocking philosophy. I mean, there are other essential factors also: budget, environment, fascination, etc.
But, when it comes right down to it, all things considered equal, it really does matter what you are hoping to achieve as far as o'clocking. A person only gets into watercooling (for the most part) when aircooling does not yield the cooling results (for whatever reason) that the enthusiast desires.
That being said, watercooling is the next logical step as water is a far better transfer medium for heat than air. Now there are many levels of "kits" that a person can avail themselves of - some are much less than $100, some are considerably more expensive. Now, your budget becomes an influence. But, you have to weigh certain other intangibles like: expandability of the kit, "future-proofing" as many of the components as possible (i.e being able to use as many parts in the next expansion of your cooling loop when you upgrade), quality and reputation - I think you get the picture.
I've been involved in watercooling for about 8 years now (you'd laugh at what used to pass for a waterblock in the early days). One of the things I have found is that, ultimately, if you stay in watercooling, you will find out that custom built kits will be the way to go - it is an inevitable conclusion as you will like many parts from multiple companies.
Now, there are two Apex series kits and both use the GT, However, Ultra just cools the CPU and the Ultra+ cools the CPU, NB and GPU. That NB waterblock - the Fusion block system - on the ASUS Maximux Extreme board uses 3/8ID barbs so that sort of handcuffs you a bit if you are going to employ it in your cooling loop. Is you start out with a 1/2 ID kit and have to downsize for that waterblock than you will be robbing yourself of some flowrate. You see, those Swiftech kits are all 1/2ID.
The nice thing about those two Ultra kits is the MCP655 pump that they use - I use that pump - dead silent and extremely powerful. Another plus is that with those kits, even though the parts are all Swiftech - they are all top grade parts (although the CPU block is a bit old) and even if you went custom design, you might have purchased most of those parts anyway. As far as kits go, most of the parts are useable well into the future (except, perhaps, that GT CPU block).
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