"Now if the 4870x2 was actually notably faster than the 280 for about the same price, then I might even take a chance on it. However, that won't be the case."
Ok, here's the list of parts he's getting, he wants to water cool the mobo, graphics, and CPU.
I need your help picking out all the water cooling parts he will need because neither of us know much about water cooling, all help is appreciated!
i doubt you could WC the mobo since it would require taking off ALL the heat sinks. the stock cooling is fine i think, but if i were to go with a 780i i would get this MSI which has even better cooling http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813130158 if u are going to tak off all th stock cooling then ether swiftech MCW30 or go to pcwatercoolingshop.com for a more buget chipset cooler (i own a OVV-M2 Chipset Block and i works great on my OCed p35)
that seems like a killer sytem there personally i wouldnt get such an expensive case, if its the big fans in that case that ur buying it for then forget about it if you have WC you dont need that many fans, i would get an antec 900 if i wanted that style of case, but right now in sporting a XION2 case, its not super quiet with the stock stuff but ive modded it alot, mainly i like it for the looks
also i wouldnt waste my money on a gtx 280
i just bought a radeon 4850, if i had a losser budget i would have got 2 4870s, dont get me wrong i love nvidia but the performance for the 4800 series is insance comparded to price and they use less power, 2 4870s will perform as good if not better than 2 gtx 280s, + the advantage of going ATI (never used to be any lol) is that you can use a intel chipset such as X48 which are faster than nvidia