Quote Originally Posted by Sadasius View Post
You want to have as much power and pressure as you can directly into it.
I disagree.

A component's (block or radiator) thermal performance directly relates to flow and flow alone. Flow directly relates to the balance of pumping power and net pressure drop from the combined components. Ergo, the performance of a block in no way has to do with where it is positioned in the loop (except that temps vary slightly throughout a loop, depending on components and flowrate). Each component will have the exact same pressure drop no matter where it is in a loop.

As for the reason we put the res immediately before the pump? It's much, much easier to bleed that way.

To the OP: with a CPU-only loop with a good pump, order is basically irrelevant, small fractions of a degree between best and worst....just put it together in whatever looks the best is my vote (and res before pump since it's easiest to bleed by a lot....and if you do want that last .1C, put the radiator directly before the block)