Thank you for the advice NaeKuh.

1) At the moment, I have all the equipment except for the motherboard (ordered, not planning on watercooling it) and the case (ordered, it's a case. Dimensions should be roughtly consistent I would expect)

2) This makes a lot of sense to me, and it's true, it would suck to have a DOA videocard with a voided warranty because of the installation of a block for example.

3) I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by this last point. From the available information, I know what sort of heat loads the CPU and GPU will dump into the loop, and should be able to plan accordingly based on the results that others have obtained for similar hardware. I seem to be missing something.

Regarding equipment revisions affecting waterblock compatibility, you have a good point and I will be sure to check to ensure that my 580GTX is compatible with the waterblock I want before I order the block, ditto the CPU block with the motherboard.

At the same time however, I can still nail down the other componants that I will need based on the information that I have, right?