There could be exclusivity agreements between Laing and Swiftech.
I don't really see how you can say PWM fans are less reliable. There are millions of them in computers (Intel stock solution).
It's not as if PWM even drives the motors, it's all signalling. So it is entirely up to the manufacturer to decide how they interpret and what they do with the signal. A bad design might try to start the motor up at a low drive, if it's receiving a low duty cycle PWM. A good design will start up at high drive, then throttle down to the corresponding PWM duty cycle.
the average pwm fan ramps up at like .15amps.
a Intel Stock fan im assuming ramps even lower then that.
A DDC ramps up to 2.5amps.
Ive had many high performance PWM fans fail on me which ramp'd up to .52amps.
And yeah while i understand PWM, my understanding is you really wanted them only on things like LED's, Flourescents.
Things like a motor was asking for it with higher current.
If you think about it.. how long has the pulse method magnetic motor even been around in our science?
Im not saying the 35x is bad.
Im just saying there isnt enough record to give it a real reliability ranking against something proven like a DDC-3.25
It may last longer then a 3.25... it may not... I can not tell you 100%.
The one thing i can tell ya tho, is you cant do anything with a swiftech pump.
Not even open it out to clean it.
I remember getting into a really heated arguement with gabe telling him how stupid it is to tell his customers to clean a pump, run pinesole though it.
Thats how gabe told us to clean out the pump.... pine sole.. !!! :\
Nah... i'll use koolances... and take it apart... mod the hell out of it.. and not worry about voiding warranty.
This is how a fully modded (still under warrenty) koolance DDC looks like:
This is attached to a koolance bay res.
This is the same bay res with dual pumps.
XSPC top friendly... well almost anything which can take a DDC will work.
And its far superior to swiftech due to the direct PCB cooling and not plastic in the middle:
Did u guys know i am the guy who made DDC sinks...

I was the first to introduce these guys with Bei Fei... and people started copying me.
Again... OP the 35x is a great pump.
Dont let me scare you.
They are reliable.. i have friends who had them running since the launch.
However the time is still ticking on these guys b4 u can make a complete call.
I will tell you, they are a ton more reliable then my DDC-2's