Kind of a long post but here goes...
My liq cooling parts came today, hooray. Just one problem, the rad is too big to fit on the back of my case.
If I line the screw holes in the back of my case up with the rad my power plug gets in the way, and as I've said before there is no way it's going to fit inside my case.
I'm thinking of mounting it on the side of the case but I'm not sure what materials I will need. I don't want to drill holes into the side of the case if I can avoid it and I obviously don't want to just "glue" the rad to the side of the case for several reasons. I thought it would be better to get some kind of standoffs. Something that I could permanently attach to the side of the case and then attach the rad too so the rad could be removed if needed. This would also be good because they would act as spacers so that the rad wouldn't be pressed up against the case which would improve air-flow through the rad.
I looked at frozen CPU and Xoxide but didn't see anything that would work, they did have an external rad from Swiftech that looked like it had feet but it didn't look like you could buy them separate and Swiftech didn't have anything like that on their site. They had "rad boxes" but they look like they are designed for smaller rads and I don't know if just one could support my rad, I suppose I could by two of them but that would be kind of pricey and I'd still need a way of mounting it to the side of the case as the power cord would still be in the way for a rear mount. I thought about a top mount but the contours of my case would make that difficult and it has top-mounted exhaust fans which would probably blow hot air onto the rad.
Should I just visit my local hardware stores in hopes of finding suitable parts or are there such parts designed for this sort of thing? Would it be possible/advisable to use adhesive instead of drilling holes? If so what kind? Am I even going in the right direction or is there another option I haven't thought of?
On another note, I have seen "socket spacers" that allow CPU water blocks to fit properly onto the CPU but not all mobos need one. How can I tell if I do?
I know I'm asking a lot of questions but I'm new to this and I'm really nervous about making a mistake and killing my shiny new system. I'm just hoping to get as many of the angles locked down as I can before I proceed and I REALLY appreciate all your time and efforts to help me.