Sorry, this post is a bit of a book.
I don't recommend liquid coolers at all, they have pump noise and typically high RPM fans. At every price point, there's a better air cooler available.
I don't know what kind of pumps you've used, but I can't hear the pumps on my X61 and X41 over the 3 SP140 Quiet Edition fans at anything above 40% speed on the fans. All of the above are completely drowned out by the GPU fans with every GPU I've owned (GTX460, GTX465, GTX670, R9 290X). That's why I went liquid on the GPU too. My tower sits on my desk at elbows length from me and you're hard pressed to hear it over ambient noise. Guru3D's review of the H110 shows basically identical sound levels to the 212 EVO. Technically the H110 was 1db quieter under load but
12c cooler.
The reason I would have avoided picking one-fan-and-radiator coolers like the H60, though, is the higher risk of a single pump failing. At least with thoughtful fan-deployment, the failure of any single fan isn't going to sufficiently cripple a tower-heatpipe cooler or some variant thereof. At least with the H60, there'd be a decent chance of cooling on par with a Hyper 212, but how far or how far short, I can't say.
I've now personally owned 6 single pump boxed setups, 1 custom and 5 AIO, (and installed 3 times that many) and the only pump failure I had was on Thermaltake's first POS all in one system back in like 2000. Stick with an Asetek based system and don't give it a second thought. My Corsair H100 and both of the above mentioned Kracken's are on 24x7 99% of the time. The H100 has been running since Dec 2011. Do you install a secondary pump and radiator in your car? I certainly don't and I don't drive around worrying about it.
The X61 + X41 combo keeps my 3770K (@4.6Ghz) under 40c and the R9 290X under 50c while gaming. Low 30's idle. Just a push setup on the fans. I didn't have to duct my case, or play musical chairs with the fans until I found a good setup.
10 years ago, I would have agreed with you guys. That Thermaltake put a sour taste in my mouth about Liquid Cooling at the time. But AIO Liquid Cooling has come a VERY long way. I'm not arguing you can't make very effective air setups. But when you're trying to do a high end air setup you usually start worrying about where the fans mount, what fans to use, ducting, etc, etc. The AIO you pretty much just mount and forget about it.
OP: If these guys don't talk you out of going Liquid, here's my thoughts on the matter.
If you look at MOST of the AIO liquid cooling setups, they are mostly rebranded Asetek systems. Each "manufacturer" slaps their own logo on it and gives you some different accessory options. Since they are all typically using the same pumps (in each "tier", for example H60 vs X40), from a reliability standpoint they are all going to be the same. It's just a matter of accessories/features. Please note however that the different "tiers" sometimes have different pumps. For example the NZXT X40 and X41. In addition to the X41 being 140mm instead of 120mm, the X41 has better pump and a 6 year warranty vs 2 year (Corsair is 5 years across the board). Just something to consider. I highly recommend the NZXT's for the following reasons:
1) Tubing. The tubing on the Corsair H100 is very inflexible and is too short for many setups. Regarding the length, I get that you don't want a bunch of extra tubing to deal with, but it pretty much requires you to have a case where the radiator is mounted directly next to the motherboard. Regarding the inflexibility, it just further compounds the length issue and makes mounting a bit of a PITA because you're fighting this tubing when trying to get everything situated. However I do believe the flexibility issue was fixed with the H100i/H110. They still have shorter tubing though..
2) Cabling. The H110 has you plug the pump into the CPU Fan port then the radiator fans onto the mobo. What if you're running a MATX or ITX board? You may not have enough fan headers. The H100i has you plug the fans into the CPU block. Frequently this results in fan cables that can't reach the pump (I'll get to why that's important in a minute). The Kraken's (both the X61 and X41, possibly their whole product line) have a braided (Corsairs cables are not) cable coming off the block for the fans. Single slot models have 2 fan plugs, Dual slot have 4 fan plugs. The use of the braided cable reduces the cabling going to the motherboard (so looks cleaner) and gives you enough extra length to prevent cable reach from being an issue in most setups.
3) Management. Both companies have software to manage your cooling. Corsair has "Link", NZXT has "CAM" both have Pro's and Con's. They both provide software fan control offering preset settings or full manual control. This is great and allows you to tweak fan speeds as needed. For example in my environment, I keep them set to 60% most of the time. This makes the fans nearly inaudable but still provide sufficient cooling. The X61 has plugs for 4 fans, so this allows me to manage all 3 radiator fans, plus the one lone case fan from the same place and without cables going to the motherboard. Corsair offers other products (lighting and select power supplies) that also use "Link" which gives you access/control over those aspects. So, if you have/want those products, that's a Pro for them. NZXT's CAM doesn't provide those options. However it provides 2 features that "Link" does not (to the best of my knowledge). CAM shows pump speed and liquid temp (rather than just component temps). Liquid temp is a key aspect of liquid cooling and a great troubleshooting tool. The X61 has an LED in the pump and you can use the software to link the LED color to the liquid temp. If your component is getting hot but the liquid isn't, you have a mounting problem. If your liquid is getting hot, you need more airflow over the radiator. So that's a Pro for NZXT. They also offer a mobile app for your phone that gives you the same features, however I don't have experience with that. Now the cons... The H100i uses Link. It's larger brother, the H110 does not. So if you want all the features, you have to go with a smaller radiator/fan setup. For both noise and cooling, bigger is better. It's an odd decision by Corsair. You can use CAM with the cheaper offerings from NZXT, some features may just be disabled (namely the pump lighting). The downside though is that CAM is a bit of a resource hog when you have it up and running on the screen. It drops down significantly when you minimize it. Hopefully they improve that at some point.
I've been liquid cooled on my rigs for 5 years straight at this point, I wouldn't go back.