Help with 1st Overclocking

[aragon127]

Ok, I've decided to enter the water-cooling population. I've been reading and researching for several weeks and have an idea of what I need and of course a bunch of questions. Here's what I've got. This an HTPC and it's in an Antec Overture case-which sucks. The case runs VERY hot. So hot it fried my vidcard recently. I messed around with the fans and cooled it a bit, but I want to take it further. I also want to make my system run quieter. Enter a water cooler. I need something that will keep my case cool and the components as well. A couple of problems come in because the case has NO ROOM at all, so an external cooling solution is needed. It must also be quiet and because it sets near my TV in the living it must look nice. I also like the "WTF is that reaction" from family and friends. I also only have a 380w power supply and lots of components so a 120v pump is preferable as I think I'm running short on power. I don't plan on overclocking so I don't need anything top of the line, just efficient. Although I would like the option to upgrade it a bit so I could I could OC a bit at some point down the line. I'd prefer something easy to install as well since this is my first attempt at WC'ing and I want something stable. I know the kits I've been looking at aren't the greatest, but they seem to suit my needs well. I just don't want to limit myself for future expansion or spend money on something that really isn't any better than air cooling. So I've been looking most at the Kingwin AS-3000. This seems to do everything I need. I especially like that it has the external radiator which would route the excess air out of the case. I'm also looking at the Evercool WC-201, which would be internal. But I'm not sure if it would be any better for cooling my CPU/GPU. Anyone have any impressions of these 2? Is there something else I should be considering? I'm also curious on the coolant. I found a bottle of PC ICE which is used in place of the distilled water and additives. It says it's better at cooling than the water mixture. Is this worth the $18?
Here's my system specs:

Antec Overture Case (REV 1)
380w Antec True Power PS
3x 250gb SATA HD's
1 DVICO fusion PCI HDTV Tuner
2x PVR 150's PCI cards
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe MOBO
MSI Gefore 6600GT PCI-express vidcard
AMD64 3100 CPU
2x512mb Mushkin DDR 3200

[Beginner]

bump so an experienced member can post

[voigts]

What kind of a price range are you able to spend?

[aragon127]

I had planned on spending about $150 but in reviewing my options in this price range I'm beginning to think this is a waste of money as most options in the sub-$150 range seem to be worse than a good air-cooling setup.

I've expanded my price range to the low $200's. Maybe up to $250. I did calculate my power consumption and I would be ok with with a 12v pump so that does open some more options.

Is the Thermaltake Rocket a good option?

I'm also going back to considering an air cooling solution. Something like an artic silencer on my vidcard and a nice heatsink and quiet fan solution for the CPU may be a better and cheaper option considering my limitations with the case. I've already replaced my noise northbridge fan with a heat sink. I am a little worried about it though because I can wiggle it and nothing I could do would get it to sit flush with the chip.

[voigts]

Neither the Thermaltake nor the Kingwin nor the Evercool are what you want.

You really need to take some time and read around here in the stickies and look around at other posts where folks ask for recommendations for watercooling components. If you are on a tight budget, i.e $150, the best way to achieve this and still have a great setup is to spend some time on here, get 100 posts, and get access to the classifieds. I have seen many slightly used complete setups for less than that. For instance, I just bought last night a Danger Den Maze 4 Acetal GPU block barely used (like 10 hours) for $25, + I spent another $15 for the Nvidia mounting hardware from Danger Den, for a grand total of $40. It would have cost me $57 with shipping total to buy it new, and a lot of places are out of stock at that. I got my Swiftech 6002 CPU block off of the classifieds for only $30 shipped (vs. about $50 new), and it was only 1 month old.

Take a look at a currently running thread: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=415736 . His is an internal setup , but you can see how much he spent, and I think his system looks pretty good if you ask me.

As small as your case is, you may want to go with making an external box for your pump, res, rad/heatercore. That is going to take some research on your part and digging to see what others here have done. Just search for external box or the like and read what comes up. I would also seriously consider a different case as even a cheap midtower looks better to me than what you have right now. Watercooling can give you silence and performance that air simply can't.