Should I trade my Eheim 1250?

It's obvious that the Eheim is a pretty big and hefty pump that takes up a lot of space, especially if you are going for an internal setup. Anyway, there are other pumps such as the Mag3 or L30 that give just as good or better performance, but at the cost of the eheim reliability.

So should I try and trade my eheim 1250 for an L30 or Mag3 for the sake of space?

setup: pump>chevette>WW>pump

ehiem is a better pump than those other 2 so i say its not a worthy trade.. its up to you though

its argued that the mag3 is better but I would not replace your eheim with one, as the performance would only be a tiny bit better if at all.

edit: do you actually have the eheim or are you just speculating? if you have not gotten a pump yet i recommend the mag 3 over the eheim 1250

It's not like the pump is massive though. In my fairly space-constrained case I am able to place it in front of the mainboard near the PCI card area. I had to adapt the PCI cards that I have a bit, but that had more to do with the outlet on the top and its associated tubing than the body mass of the pump itself.

If you're worried about space for an internal setup, I'd suggest (1)taking a good look at the radiator, as some cases will not accomodate a 120mm-based one without modification, and it's fan(s); dual shrouded fans take up a lot of space in the depth dimension of the case. And (2) the tubing. When setting up my internal systems I've always found the tubing to be the biggest problem- it needs to run practically everywhere throughout the case and it must be routed in such a way that it does not bend and preferably also without the need for many 90/45 etc elbows.