Once you've exhausted the possibilities of standard heat sinks and TEC enhanced heatsinks you come to the conclusion that air can only remove so much heat.  Sure you can keep making bigger heatsinks with bigger and more powerful funs, but case noise really does become an issue at a certain point.  Once you've reached this conclusion you're ready for the next step.  Yes watercooling.  I know what you're thinking, water and electricity don't mix. Well they don't have to since we're going to keep them separated.   Don't fret many others have done this successfully (and yes some have not).  Liquid cooling is much more efficient than air cooling at transferring heat.  The space shuttle uses it, remember the radiators inside the cargo bay doors.  Your car uses it unless you drive a VW bug or Chevy Corvair.

Like all projects this should begin with a prototype to verify it works.  That's the stage I'm currently at.  At this point various configurations are tried and tested with no motherboard or processor installed.  This way if there is a leak during the tests nothing gets damaged.  Just like building your own system this requires that you do some research and come up with the parts (or make them yourself).  Believe it or not there are many kits to choose from and even some pre-assembled systems out there. 

Here's my current assortment of parts:

A DangerDen Maze2-1 copper heatsink with integral coldplate (for addition of a peltier)

A DangerDen cooling cube (15 pass copper core radiator)

A Danner MagDrive 250 Water Pump (cut away view)

An In-Win Q500 Full Tower Case

Radiator and 120mm fan in case

Also used but not shown here is the peltier (156 watt), a 13.5V 20amp power supply (for TEC), assorted 3/8 inch fittings, valves and tubing.

---Stay Tuned for progress reports