I kind of have some experience to add on the matter although it is basically subjective. Using FRAPS to see the FPS I was achieving in Planetside 2 (Connery West, TR FWIW
) on my old rig (Gigabyte board (MA790FXT-UD5P), AMD 945 C2 Stepping OCed to 3.825GHz (Water cooled), 4x2GB G.Skill 1333 Ram at 8-8-8-21, EVGA GeForce 660ti Superclocked) vs my current rig (See Signature except RAM, GPU/VGA, and storage was the same) the difference is being able to play the game on medium graphics with 40 FPS average in major battles to playing the game on ultra with 40 FPS average in even the most intense battles at the Crown being besieged by both the NC and the VR. After swapping out the memory, I never see the 30's for FPS anymore, it's almost always higher than 40. Excessive, probably, but stutter free!
The Ultra settings are unlockable through editing the ini file that controls graphics output. This is laid out by Sony and according to them is 100% acceptable and even encouraged because it only changes the graphics quality and not what the graphics display/show. Basically it comes down to the shadows, number of particles shown in large firefights and lots of grass everywhere. It's the settings they used for the launch screen shots.
Obviously there was a pretty huge change going from a quad core 945 C2 at 3.825 GHz to a 3770k at 4.7GHz just from changing the processor, but with memory, storage, and the VGA/GPU staying the same it is as close of a comparison as I can provide.
Water cooling is very much a hobby that has it's own pro's and con's. I went with watercooling because it does allow me similar temperatures to high end air cooling without the noise, and because I had never done it before, and the Swiftech kit I purchased made it ohh so easy. Depending on the direction that you go for processor choice the Swiftech kit can be adopted as the Apogee waterblock is "universal". If you can make a mount for it (if they don't include or offer the one you need (that is free by the way)) and the processor heat spreader isn't larger than the water block, it will mount.
IIRC Intel is sticking with the same heatsink mounting style for Haswell/Broadwell (please correct me if I'm wrong) so at least up through the next tick/tock cycle you should be squared away for the mount on say the Swiftech kit. I also don't think AMD is ditching AM3+ anytime soon either but the mounting solution for AM3+ is the same as far back as Socket A IIRC.
One thing that I did like is that Swiftech ships the H20-X20 series with all of the modern Intel mounting solutions and some older ones (Socket 755 for example). The AMD AM3+ bracket had to be asked for from Swiftech but was sent out, overnight, at ZERO cost to me. I think the best part of the kit is that should, more like when, I chose to expand this water loop, I can. The block itself has 2 additional outputs on it for parallel loops and the reservoir/radiator/pump combo has the locations to support those 2 additional parallel loops. The pump is their MCP35X pump which has a solid reputation as being a reliable pump (at least form my research
), the radiator, and blocks are all copper/brass and the waterblock (Apogee HD at the time of writing) is also very nice. Basically, for the price of $240, you get a complete water cooling set up for your CPU and future CPUs for at least the next few years with the high possibility that Swiftech will release updated brackets for the CPU for future units. The biggest disappointment I had is that their kits no longer come with the Prolimatek PK1 TIM but one of Swiftech's own TIMs. I haven't tested it against anything else yet (I have some Gelid Extreme TIM (or whatever it is) here that came with my ASRock Z77 Formula OC) but it was good enough to get a 3770k to 4.7 GHz with their water kit and keep temps under 95ºC under Prime95 Blend FWIW. I also didn't get the Rad Box for external mounting but I didn't have any plans to do that anyway so it didn't matter to me.
