New to Water Cooling

Am I the only one who loves the looks of reference NVIDIA GPUS?

Ok, here is the real question:  I am new to water cooling, and what should I look for?  I am planning on building a new PC with lots of room for water cooling (Corsair 900D), and I was wondering what I should go after.  480m Radiator?  240m Radiator?  Water cooled loop?  (I am new to water cooling, so, yeah...)

This is going to be my first water cooled "to the max build" 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1l39C< So far

 My budget is $2500, and, I am considering lowering the PSU to 900-1000watt, for some upgrade room, instead of 1200watt.

this;

I would ditch those gk104 760's and grab a single reference 780 or 2 if you can afford it. There are some really nice blocks for the 780's around at the moment like the new Heatkiller models. ooooooooo so nice...

Your build certainly wont be cheap. Are you going to be looking at making the system super quiet? If so you'll be wanting some fans that can run at 5v like scytheGT's.

Best of luck.

I am mainly going to overclock this, but, being quiet could be a plus.  http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1l39C  Here is what I got so far.  Do you know any guides/tutorials on water loops?  Including CPU and GPU cooling.  And also, any brand recommendations?  I have heard of xspc.  Also, last question, how exactly would I take use of multiple radiators?  Multiple water blocks?  Each radiator only cooling one component?

That PSU makes my heart hurt. You would need no more than 500W for an extremely overclocked, watercooled rig with a single 780 + 4770k. 750W gives you room for two more 780s, although 850W would probably offer better efficiency. For two 780s, 650W is plenty.

The Maximus VI Extreme is shit. It's not worth the money, and is underperforming many $150 Z87 motherboards. Save your money. Get an MSI Z87 Mpower or Mpower Max for overclocking.

You will want a single 360mm rad, or at least 360mm of total rad space, for a CPU and GPU loop. I tend to recommend fat radiators because they offer more cooling options than the slim rads. An Alphacool NexXxos 360 Monsta would be ideal, but the NexXos Full Copper are great too.

Brands? Koolance and Heatkiller are the best block makers, along with Aqualis. For CPU blocks, the Koolance 380i and Heatkiller CU 3.0 are my recommendations. GPU blocks are more subjective, because they are all so close in thermal performance. Look into the Koolance one if you get a CPU block from Koolance, for aesthetics sake, and look into a Heatkiller one if you use a Heatkiller CPU block, and so on. EK is highly over-rated, in my honest opinion. XSPC is great, but I can't stand the new looks they have been going for.

The 840 is a great SSD for reads, but has incredibly low writes. The ADATA SX900 is a better choice for the money, with R/W both over 500MB/s. But, back to watercooling.

The 900D is an okay case, but for watercooling, and build quality, nothing compares to Case Labs, not even LD, as much as I love him. The M8 has support for up to 4x 360mm radiators, which in total, is actually less than the 900D can support in terms of total radiator space, but that does not mean than literally any system you throw at a system with 2 or more 360mm rads will be perfectly fine. The Case Labs M8 was my personal pick for my loop, but I ended up starting to build my own test bench-style case instead. Fantastic case, great guy, and overall, the best cases on the market.

When you design a loop, you have lots of options. You can run multiple pumps in parallel, serial, you can put your waterblocks, if you have multiple GPUs, in series, or parallel, you can run dual loops, you can do all kinds of shit. I recommend just doing a standard lrrp, single pump, parallel everything. The radiators can be linked directly after each other, but it is theoretically better to have your radiators spaced out in the loop order between components, such as pump to res, to CPU, to radiator, to GPU, to radiator, back to pump. It does'n,t really matter that much, in terms of loop order, as long as physically, the pump is below the res in terms of actual distance, but really, aside from that, it couldn't matter less.

Now, your rig as you had it was almost $2500 already. Does the watercooling have to fit inside of the $2500 total, or is it external from that budget? I'm going to assume, for safetys' sake, that it does fit in with the $2500.

If so, then here is what I would build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1l4ex

I would probably switch that TIM for CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra, but they are all pretty close.

A single 360mm radiator, without fans, mind you, is enough for a non-overclocked setup with a single GPU. I could not, despite my best effort, fit 3 good fans in there. However, there is a way around that. If you can spend a little bit more, get 3x Scythe GT 1450 RPM 120mm fans, but if not, get 3x Yate Loons. The are about $5 each, and are fantastic for the price. However, the quality is hit-or-miss. Worth $5, though, even if they might not last that long.

Went with Koolance for the blocks, but that is just my personal aesthetic preference at 9:30 PM EST.

Case Labs M8 <3

Seasonic X650 PSU; fantastic, hits 80+ Platinum in cold testing, has stunning load line reg, great ripple, and overall, is a fantastic PSU, more than enough for if you want to throw another 780 in there.

Mpower Max instead of MVIE. Watch this to find out why I highly recommend not buying that board. Asus can make some, and does/has made some great stuff, but damn, the MVIE was a flop.

16GB, in 8GB sticks for the most expansion room, of G.SKILL Sniper 1866mHz CL9 memory. Fast, cheap, low profile, graet looknig; what more could you ask for? More of it.

256GB ADATA SX900 SSD, as explained earlier.

8 XSPC 3/8 by 5/8 compression fittings, with a black finish. 2 for the integrated res/pump, which is an Alphacool 12V pump, 2 for the CPU block, two for the GPU block, and two for the radiator. There is also a Bitspower G1/4" plug, because the pump/res combo has 3 ports, not 2, and does not include a plug for the additional thread.

Lastly, 10 feet of Primochill Advanced LRT 3/8 by 5/8 clear tubing. Note that I didn't include any coolant. If you want a colored loop, I'd get colored tubing, and use distilled, di water as the coolant, because the mixed coolants are both expensive, not as long-lasting, and can gunk up, clog blocks, and stain tubing.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Alternatives:

Best 360mm radiator, the Alphacool NexXxos Monsta 360mm, almost twice as thick as the NexXxos Full Copper. A little bit more expensive, but well worth it if you want to use less fans.

For the pump, there are tons of options. Most famously, you have the Laing DDC and D5 Vario. Most famously out of those two you have the Swiftech MC35X and Swiftech MCP655. However, pretty much any modern 12V pump will do for a loop of this size. If you have the money to spend, a Swiftech MCP355 with a pump top might be a better option aesthetically, whil still having enough flow for a quad SLI/CF rig. I am personally buying an MCP355 with Petra's top, for about $50 total, (it's used), but you can get the combo new for about $100. The Bitspower mod tops and mod kits are really popular, but taek a Swiftech MCP655 and add about another $100 to the price.

Fittings wise, as long as the fittings match your tubing size, you are good. Popular brands include, most famously, Bitspower, Monsoon, XSPC, Koolance, and Aquatuning. Those XSPC compression fittings I listed above are great for the price, about 1/3 the cost of some of the Bitspower fittings, but you can't compare to Bitspower's range. If you are going to be using hard tubing, such as acrylic, copper, etc., Festo makes some fantastic push fittings. Bitspower and Koolance also offer fittings made for hard tubing, but I personally think that they can't compare to Festo quality or aesthetics.

Speaking of tubing, If Primochill Advanced LRT is too expensive, essentially any size tubing (that matches your fittings) will work. Primochill Advanced LRT is just some of, if not the bent standard tubing on the market in terms of plasticiser (or lack thereof), lack of kinkng, and quality. However, there are lots of options out there. If you want a more hands-on project, probably not best for first-timers, you could use the new Primochill line of hard tubing, which is acrylic based, and has matching fittings (acrylic tubing, and all hard tubing for that matter, will not work with standard compression fittings). E22 also has some really nice acrylic tubing. For copper tubing, which you may have seen most awesomely implemented with a nickel plating (which is what I'm using in my loop :D), you have to buy that from a hrdware store, or such. Do not buy it coiled! If you do get acrylic tubing, to bend it, you use a hair iryer, because it is just plastic, but for copper tubing (or is it pipe at this point?), you have to purchase a pipe bender. I recommned the brand Ridgid (spelled close to that at least), and Rothenberger. Make sure the pipe bender is for your exact tubing OD; for example, you can't use a 3/8" pipe bender on 10mm copper pipe and get good bends.

If you do get a pump that is not integrated to the res, but want it to be a connected unit, to save money on fittings, or aesthenic reasons, there are two great options. Male-to-male G1/4" connectors are really cheap, come in lots of different finishes, and can just screw right into your pump and res. You could also use a D-plug, which is essentially a dual-rotary version of the male-to-male adapter.

For the res itself, Bitspower Z Multi tube reservoirs are great, but once again, most anything will do. Aqualis tube reservoirs, which are actually made with glass (very high quality), are some of the top choices, but if you need to save some money, get whatever the hell you want. I'm a fan of the Bitspower Z Multi 250mL, like I said, but that is mostly personal preference, and only slightly build quality related.

Completely unrelated to watercooling, but on a rig of this quality and budget, I highly recmmond looking into cable sleeving.