reasonably specific wc questions

been getting the wc itch lately. i plan on cooling 3 gpus (two 275s and a 9600gso) and my i7. the 275s will have a swiftech mcw60-r2 block, the other gpu will have a full cover block on it. ideally the system would be quieter than my system currently is on air.

i plan on having three rads, a 120mm, a 240mm and a 160mm (2x80mm).

my questions are:
1) do i have enough rads to cool everything reasonably well with slow fans? based on this thread
http://forums.pureoverclock.com/showthread.php?t=2495
i've estimated this to dissipate about 600 watts, although with the lower fans i'd guess this will end up closer to 500watts. should i be trying larger rads or adding on another 120mm somewhere?

2) any chance at all i'd be able to pull off one large loop?

2a) if one large loop is possible, what kind of a pump would i need? could i run two pumps in a series? since i'm aiming for silence i was looking at either the dangerden cpx-pro or two d-tek db-1 in a series. do people actually run pumps in series? or is that just something petras made up to sell twice as many pumps...

i'm just going to guess that if two loops are necessary the cpx-pro would be able to power each of the loops.

1) I think you'll need more rads, 2x320 is probably what you need. Depending on the brand i would pick up swiftech mcw320s...

2) You will need to separate the loops, or you can settle with the primochill T3 reservoir

2) Having 2 pump in series won't give you twice the flow but you do gain some, although redundancy is the main reason for running pumps in series in case 1 fails you don't cook your video cards.

I'm going to assume that you are going for high overclocks and silence so I will answer your questions based off of that assumption:

1. At a bare minimum you would want 1 120mm rad for the CPU (probably a 240mm rad), and a 360 mm rad for the GPUs (possibly going to 2 240 mm rads or 2 360 mm rads).

2. I think you will have more success by going with 2 loops, one for the CPU and one for the graphics cards.

2a. I wouldn't worry about running 2 pumps in a series as it won't net you much of a benefit and should your pump die the CPU will most likely shut down everything before any damage is done to your system.

i decided to go with two loops from one res with a cpx-pro on the gpu loop, and a db-1 on the cpu loop (ordered last night). i figured the shared res will help balance the heat dissipation from the radiators between the two loops (although this is just my assumption, i have no idea if this actually happens). the swiftech rads look like exactly what i need.

what is the best way to mount fans / radiators to a case? is it

rad -> fan -> case

or

fan -> rad -> case

will i need a different mounting based on the fans / rads i use?

The order doesn't matter when you have a res it will balance the temperatures through the whole system, so go with the most convinient layout for your built.