whismerhill

Radiators come in many more thicknesses than those. Alphacool (the ones I use in my build) make 25mm, 40mm, 60mm and the chunky "Monsta" 80mm thick variety in 120mm and 140mm fan sizes from singles to quads - that's 32 different SKU's for those counting, not including the more obscure 40mm, 60mm, 80mm, 92mm and 180mm fan size models they also have.
 
Yes, Alphacool will sell you a triple 180mm 80mm thick rad - good luck finding a case to fit THAT thicc boi
 
You could make the argument that a single 120mm 80mm thick rad with two reasonable static pressure fans in push/pull can keep any single block in check. Remember that adding thicker radiators increases the coolant volume in the loop - more coolant volume for the same given heat load means lower coolant temperatures... and lower hardware temps. A longer res tube does the same trick too.
 
But if all you're doing is matching 120-times-whatever rads with how many blocks you have to keep "in check" you aren't really getting any better results than air cooling. Unfortunately that's the big difficulty with modern cases - finding a box that can accommodate radiators and fans properly. Plenty will fit a 2x120mm AIO with a single set of fans and that's where their "compatibility" ends. Go thicker than 25mm, push/pull or you want triples/quads and it's a serious struggle finding a case that can truly claim to be water cooling friendly (again RIP CaseLabs). Even trying to fit two AIO (one for the CPU and one for your GPU) gets complicated.
 
In my case (pun intended) I have five blocks cooling the four GPU's (980Ti) and a full mobo block (CPU/VRM/PCH). Coolant flow goes into the mobo block and then splits across the four GPU's. From there it gets cooled by two dual 140mm rads, a single 120mm rad and two triple 120mm rads. All of them are the "Monsta" 80mm thick type. The pump is just a single non-pwm D5 mated to a medium height res I've got set at #4. All the rads are in push/pull using Akasa pwm fans (22 fans total) that I've wired into just three mobo headers using three 8-way pwm splitters. I have a custom fan curve set in software for both normal 60/70F and summer 80/90F temps.
 
None of the above would have been possible without the CaseLabs case that I am using, however. Trying to do this same build today I would seriously struggle finding a case that could make this all work. Case choice is critical for a well done water cooled build.

Personally, I'm running 5ghz (8700k) with XMP (3466) on and have zero issues

for me XMP never worked, always had unstability problems (name it BSOD, hangs, crashes, etc) so I prefer to tune memory frequency and latencies manually.
After building, I dedicate enough time to configure all of the settings in the BIOS setup even at stock, can't trust these "Auto" settings too much... my CPU was overvolted to 1.43V at stock frequency, what a joke. 

it was his z390 review, he was talking about how the lower end gigabyte boards just doesn't clock higher than 4000 (they are known for problems with memory compatibility issues that got better with this gen) thats one major distinction with the elite and the boards above it.
 
Also i've done about 4 builds on zen+, 3 of them were mid range boards, and they hit a memory wall rather quick, while the x470 taichi just clocked to 4000 no problems, i'd say it's way more sensitive for amd compared to intel.

i find gskill ram to be "close enough" and probably the top of the pile, the rest is matching a set of ram thats on the qvl (i used the z370 list for my z390), it's more important for ryzen.
 
Now where i believe it doesn't work, is when motherboard manufacturers claim they can run 4266 or whatever on their mid range board, buildzoid did a video on that, those boards do not work with high speed ram, nor would i try to make it work. For high end boards i still don't expect the ram to work just by switching to xmp without manual tuning, vccio/vccsa/imc voltages, secondary timings etc.

Hey man, not sure how correct I am but the way I've always seen XMP was like the RAM manufacturer would test timings and speeds on the ram, find a nice stable speed with good timings for each chip and mark the xmp profile.
 
like a saved state for the ram essentially. It's probably more like they apply an xmp profile and run it through automated tests in the factory and which tests they pass and which xmp profile they hit stability at would be the different speeds we get? I might be totally off though. but XMP seems to me like a guaranteed state for specific chips to overclock to.
 
I mean buying a 2400 MHz chip doesn't mean it can't run at a higher speed but it might have not hit the timings the company want the higher speed to run at so it got labled at 2400 MHz / it only passed a certain speed on certain memory controllers but not all of the simulated ones, so a higher speed can't be guaranteed.
 
That's what I would think goes on. How else would they be certain that a chip can handle whatever it is they put the XMP profile to.
 
 
Side note: I recently moved over to a AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (using the Asrock Taichi X470) because my NVME drive had a lot of trouble on my Asus Deluxe X99 board (paired with 5960X) . and it's the first time I'm able to get the xmp profile to run stable without any issues. I could get the deluxe board to run XMP on their latest bios but then NVME would not work at all. I think it's an Asus bios issue for most of their xmp issues. certain timings still picking up as auto or smth else than the xmp profile is supposed to override them to.

I guess it varies by the RAM manufacture, the motherboard, the BIOS version, and the CPU for starters. I have XMP enabled on my system (specs on my profile) and the RAM is rated for 1866mhz and the XMP profile has it set to 2133mhz. I assume it also adjust things like clock speed, voltage, latency, and other things I don't have any knowledge of. For me, it's worked flawlessly since day one. I have had zero issues with my RAM and it's XMP profile. Some RAM kits paired with some CPU's take manual tweaking just to get it to rated speeds. Because of how "interchangeable" most pc parts are, this doesn't really take me by surprise. Somethings need more attention on some configs than others, just the way of finicky pc components I guess. But as I said, I haven't had any issues or complaints with my XMP enabled RAM. So as they say, your mileage may vary.