For what it's worth I did watercooling about 10 years ago, maybe a little longer. I did AquaComputer and over time my loops went from messy to extremely neat, I ended up sourcing 90 degree pushfit bends from a pneumatics company etc...
Eventually I did regret it. I smoked back then and the space between rad and fans was filthy. It also made upgrades difficult, eventually I got to the point where I did an upgrade that wiped everything out.
I thought I'd never go back to it. I'm going back to it now because I have more money and I have a fairly powerful system that somewhat justifies it. I'll be going straight in at the deepend, hardline, 2 or more rads, higher end case, ridiculously expensive motherboard with a block already on it, 2 full cover GPU blocks etc. My PC is already a 7700K, 32GB memory, 500GB M.2, 1TB SSD, 980 Strix SLI so I don't really see myself upgrading for a very long time. I'm also content with the idea of paying through the nose for upgrades.
I work long hours and I've put a lot of effort into getting where I am now, and as vain or pathetic as it might seem I want to have a high end watercooled PC that looks great, even if I can only barely justify why I want it.