ToastyBear

It depends. Laptop HDDs have never been good to me or anything for that matter. But that probably has more to do with people moving the laptop while the HDD is in operation more than anything else. If its just sitting still in an enclosure then it should be fine. It also depends if the enclosure gets hot or not. HDDs don't like heat. 
 
You can generally expect something like 4-5 years out of an HDD but I would plan to replace it at 3 years just in case. If you truly want backup against HDD failures then go for some sort of RAID setup or cloud backup.

Here are some things you should consider.
 
If you have an old motherboard and CPU. You can just cobble up a second computer and use that to host your hard drives. Its going to be much cheaper than some NAS or RAID enclosure.
 
Chipset RAID is fine so as long you stay within the same platform. RAID created on an Intel chipset works with any Intel chipset and will probably continue to work in the future so you can just use that. Intel RAID has crappy performance but it should still beat any NAS enclosure by a mile.
 
Alternative you can go for a RAID card from LSI or Microsemi if you want maximum performance. You can find some cheap cards on ebay, especially older generations. A lot of servers get upgraded each year and the old cards find their way on ebay all the time. 
 
To protect your data from power failure, you can either add a backup battery to a RAID card or just set your drives to "write through" so it doesn't cache any data. 

You could crack it open and post a picture so we can see how many flash chips are inside

I just bought an LSI 9361-8i off ebay. Theres a lot of cheap third party vendor LSI cards coming from China. Im skeptical about it but apparently other people got it to work and the price is right. I'll let you know how it goes but knowing china shipping it would probably take a month. I heard you can flash third party vendor cards with original LSI firmware. 

Not sure how loud those clicks are but I have a set of Hitachi Deskstars and they are noisy. They might be working as intended.
 
I had Seagate Barracudas a long time ago and when those click, it was known as the click of death. Seagate kept replacing it under warranty and my new refurbished replacements will work for a few months and click as well, then die. 

Good news. THE FAN DOES TURN OFF. It does it after the internals are cool enough, it just need a few minutes. 
 
The spacer gives more space than the default configuration. There isn't much space to begin with. Im too lazy to take a picture. But you can be assured there is more space with the spacer. The fan isn't super high RPM and doesn't need to pull that much air anyway. 
 
As for the panel. Backlight bleed is absolutely terrible but what kind of IPS monitor doesn't have terrible backlight bleed anyway. 
 
https://imgur.com/pbgsGAY
Shot with auto iso which cranked it up to 6400 ISO for that overblown glow. The box is actually a dropdown menu with text. If you are not careful with your camera controls you can easily overblown your image when shooting a super bright object in complete darkness.
 
https://imgur.com/vPOrjfe
This is a better image shot at 2000 ISO. Here is with the FALD on and off. Backlight bleed goes away when FALD is on but it leaves a tiny bit of glow. The text is still overblown and you can only see a white square but thats because my camera simply doesn't have enough dynamic range. The halo effect is accurate.
 
But you have to take the second image with a grain of salt. The problem is what you see is not constant. It really depends on how adjusted to the dark your eyes are. I honestly could not see it at all for the first few minutes doing this test. Then I turned off all the lights in the room and adjusted my eyes to the dark before I was able to see it. If you aren't looking at exactly a black and white object in a pitch black room, its really not an issue.
 
Also something that completely surprised me. For the people who said 4:2:2 sub sampling is basically the same thing and doesn't matter. You guys are wrong. So super wrong. My god it looks terrible. Im not running this monitor on 4:2:2 ever. 
 
Good news. The monitor actually runs 444 sub sampling up to 120hz. It only drops to 422 when you are using a 10 bit source or displaying 144hz. You won't see any 10 bit sources outside of photo editing software so thats pretty much a non issue. 

This video is absolutely ridiculous. The monitor is plastic? WTF do you expect carbon fiber? At this price? No way you would get carbon fiber. If acer made the housing entirely metal, you would have just complained how it weighted 50 pounds. Plastic is absolutely fine. You can buy a $10k TV and it would be plastic. Metal is just not practical.
 
Now the fan. OMG the entire basis of his rant is just stupid.

This is what they give you in the box. This is not a mounting bracket. This is just a spacer to add additional space between the monitor and the vesa mount so the fan can breathe. The actual problem is the guy put the flat side on the fan and the completely open side on the vesa mount. Each side has the exact same 4 screw holes and there wasn't any instructions or pictures on the box so I guess Acer has too high of expectations for their users to have common sense.
 
But his point about the fan not turning off does annoy me. I have my computer in the bedroom so its annoying but I have a powerbar with a switch so I just kill the power.

So thats all within the same disk or from different disks? 
 
Anyway. I have no clue what speeds you can get out of it like that. Since it needs to read and then do the write and cant do operations simutaneously, the speed is probably abysmally slow. 

Every pre built computer i bought came with a seagate barracuda. Failed on me every single time. I went to my friends house, saw a HDD on the desk, friend said it was broken, i asked if its a barracuda, he said YES!!! 
 
Looking at statistics, barracudas are among the most failed drives. They even discontinued the line for a while. They are NOT good. 
 
I bought a 5400RM seagate drives. I was still a noob back then. It was apparently a failed barracuda that couldnt pass the 7200RPM test so they revalidate failed barracudas at 5400RPM to increase yields. That drive failed within 1 year.
 
Every WD blue and black i bought runs perfectly fine. Internet statistics show those drives fail way less. 
 
On the flip side. I have been buying seagate constellation and enterprise capacities for 4 years now. Extremely reliable drives. Statistics shows those are the most reliable drives.
 
Now sure how the new line of barracudas stack up but i wouldnt touch them. Ill buy hitachi or seagate ironwolf instead if i wss on budget. 

I personally use a Miter Saw. Just drop it down slowly and you get the straightest cuts ever. Not telling everyone to go out and buy a saw, but many people already have such tools because they are super handy around the house.

Is your rig exposed to direct sunlight? A lot of tubing is more or less the same stuff with a different price tag on it. But one thing is for certain. High energy UV radiation destroy plastics.
 
Another thing to consider is risidual dyes and plastics inside your loop. I havent used dyes for years but when i flushed out my rad with a strong acid, all this blue stuff came out from over 6 years ago when i last used dyes. I noticed my tubes having a slight blue hue when i switched to hardline acrylic which promted me to take apart my loop. The dye was in my rad and slowly leeching out overtime clouding the walls of my tubes. Particulate matter easily sticks to soft tubes. 

Yes it will be enough. But your temps will be above average for sure. Your fans might need a higher than average RPM.
 
Honestly i like having lots of rads with fans spinning at something stupid like 600 rpm so they dont sound like anything.

I use koolance nickle quick disconnects. Their newest revision. I think they are the QD4. 
 
I had another set of koolance QDC but they were painted black. The paint was no good. Repeated use would scratch the paint and cause a shit ton of friction. Like they still work but they were extremely hard to insert and disconnect so i just replaced them with unpainted ones. Not a problem ever since.

I honestly wont get my hopes up for coverage for the video card. I would just wait for a 1080ti, buy thay and call it an upgrade.
 
Really shit though. I had my fair share of mishaps. Though they usually end in fireworks. Most parts of a pcb actually doesnt have enough voltage to permanently damage the card. I have my radiator leak over my GTX 980 no problem, though the dye stained it forever. My radiator housing had a pin hole in it. Didnt know until i notice my card was wet. I was too lazy to RMA so i just sanded down the rad to the metal and gave it a tiny weld. 
 
I have had water on my PCIE power pins before. Fried both the mobo and card. That time hurt like hell. I was able to RMA the card and say i dunno what happened. The card came with a preinstalled block so i didnt have to break any warranty seals. 
 
What i do for a leak test these days is use one of thise tire inflators with PSI readout. I attach the tire inflator onto the part i want to test with a thread adaptor. Then connect the end to an air tank. Then i read the PSI meter or listen for obvious leaks. Sometimes spray obvious parts  like the gasgets with soapy water. I mostly do it for new rads. Rads leak the most with their multiple solder joints and shit.

I honestly wont get my hopes up for coverage for the video card. I would just wait for a 1080ti, buy thay and call it an upgrade.
 
Really shit though. I had my fair share of mishaps. Though they usually end in fireworks. Most parts of a pcb actually doesnt have enough voltage to permanently damage the card. I have my radiator leak over my GTX 980 no problem, though the dye stained it forever. My radiator housing had a pin hole in it. Didnt know until i notice my card was wet. I was too lazy to RMA so i just sanded down the rad to the metal and gave it a tiny weld. 
 
I have had water on my PCIE power pins before. Fried both the mobo and card. That time hurt like hell. I was able to RMA the card and say i dunno what happened. The card came with a preinstalled block so i didnt have to break any warranty seals. 
 
What i do for a leak test these days is use one of thise tire inflators with PSI readout. I attach the tire inflator onto the part i want to test with a thread adaptor. Then connect the end to an air tank. Then i read the PSI meter or listen for obvious leaks. Sometimes spray obvious parts  like the gasgets with soapy water. I mostly do it for new rads. Rads leak the most with their multiple solder joints and shit.

My recommendation is buy 2 sets of QDC (quick disconnect vavles). During normal operation the QDC woukd connect the component leading to the pump.
 
When you want a water change. Get 2 pieces of loose tubing with the second set of QDC. Connect them to the first set so now your loop is open. Place one tube into an empty bucket and the second tube into a bottle of distilled water. Press the power button and the pump will draw the distilled water from the bottle and spit the old stuff into the empty bucket. Once your done just reconnect the thing.

My recommendation is buy 2 sets of QDC (quick disconnect vavles). During normal operation the QDC woukd connect the component leading to the pump.
 
When you want a water change. Get 2 pieces of loose tubing with the second set of QDC. Connect them to the first set so now your loop is open. Place one tube into an empty bucket and the second tube into a bottle of distilled water. Press the power button and the pump will draw the distilled water from the bottle and spit the old stuff into the empty bucket. Once your done just reconnect the thing.

Just use acrylic tubing. My experience is acrylic doesnt stain. 
 
However ALL materials will cloud and develop gunk. Soft tubing can have chemicals leech inti the plastic which permanently stains it. Acrylic and glass wont have this happen however particulate matter can settle on the walls of the tubing or block or res or basically any surface no matter what it is.
 
You need to take apart glass reserviours or glass tubing once in a while and give it a good scrub. A waterpik (a water jet thing for cleaning teeth) is very good at cleaning out tubing. A nice scrub and its good as new. 

I think there is some misconception here. Elements such as gold is considered a noble metal and regarded as not very reactive. What they actually mean is this type of metal is not very reactive towards oxygen in air. This does not mean gold doesn't react to anything at all. Like any metal, gold can be used to make many many compounds. Silver is in the same boat, like literally, they are in the same metal series. Silver even tarnishes just in air.
 
So how reactive are metals towards other metals? Basically any metal can react with one another, no exceptions. The only question is how fast. You can google a chart with the "electrode potential" of each metal, and it would be measured in volts. Metals with different electrode potentials will steal or lose electrons to another metal. The greater the difference in electrode potential, the faster the reaction. Metals such as Nickle and Copper has similar electrical potential and thus shouldn't really do anything, or just really really slowly. Silver on the other than is very different from Copper and will corrode one another at an appreciable rate. A tiny silver coil wouldn't cause pits or breaks in the block but will probably tarnish the copper and silver.

Not having to listen to your GPU is nice.

Water is one of the few compounds that expand when they solidify. Most liquid don't form hydrogen bonds to crystallize
 
Also gallium will corrode your metal blocks.
Mercury on the other hand will make you retarded because it evaporates for you to breathe the fumes.

They were originally invented and manufactured by Allen Manufacturing.
As all things goes, if there's an original version, there is a knock-off version. Thats where the words hex keys come from, so there are no legal issues.
 
They are usually tiny so I hear them called Keys more than wrenches.

Sometimes bending can get tricky if you do 2 bends per section, but it looks awesome.
 
It is so much easier with a Miter Saw to cut the tubing than tube cutters or a hacksaw. You can cut very quickly and accurately and take thin slices off the ends to get it just right.
 
I prefer Acrylic because it is more crystal clear and smooth. Its harder to bend but im not doing water cooling because its easy. Just get good, tubes are cheap anyway.

Technically any metal will corrode any other metal, there is no escape. However its all about rate of reaction. It can be super fast and eat through your blocks or be so slow you only get slight discoloration. 
 
What you are interested in is the nobility of metals. Below is a link with a table. Metals with similar electrical potential will pose little risk to corrosion. Metals with greater difference will corrode one another. According to the table, silver is fairly closer to copper so its ok, but it probably discolors your shiny copper blocks, not that nickle or other metals won't do that already
 
http://www.engineersedge.com/galvanic_capatability.htm
 
Also from a medical science point of view. Heavy metals are highly toxic to almost all forms of life, being able to disrupt cell functions on way too many levels. Silver is probably one of the best anti-microbials you can find. However did you know Copper is also a very very potent anti-microbial metal. Many hospitals are switching to copper hand rails and door knobs because copper is amazing at killing bacteria. You should really have no problem with copper blocks and skip the silver coil. Of course water cooling stores will try to sell you everything just to make money. Not to mention if you use straight distilled water and don't expose your loop to direct sunlight, theres really nothing algae can feed off of anyway. 
 
Sorry for the science lesson.