Rims and brake pads have improved a lot over the years. I did a gran fondo with cork pads once, it got pretty unnerving when it started to rain. Modern pads for carbon are pretty damn good.

Didn't you recommend Ardennes Black wheels?

Bitex hubs, CX-Rays, Al nipples, Kinlin rims. You can buy it all from BHS for $300-$350. http://www.bikehubstore.com/category-s/219.htm
I don't know anything about manufactured wheels, but I'm sure you can find something similar for $500 or less.

My mind was mush, so I mixed everything up. I wrote "Ardennes Black 45," but I meant Jet Black 4 or Jet Black 5, since the context was aero wheels. I had Ardennes on the brain because of my own wheels.

On the subject of Ardennes wheels... you can always build and buy cheap wheels. I had a great set of Vuelta Corsa Race wheels close to that $500 price point. But, they pale in comparison to my Ardennes Black wheels. I would never put the two in the same performance category. You get what you pay for. The standard Ardennes wheels are closer to the cheap wheels, but still superior. I loved my Vuelta wheels for what they were, but they were cheap and it showed in a number of ways. Cheap wheels are cheap for a reason.

I have a lot of experience with this; built wheels professionally for 10 years. If they are built well, those BHS kits will be as good as anything you can get. I didn't even use Bitex hubs when I was building because they were too cheap (pretty much all my profit was on hubs), but I'd say they are as good or better than DT, Tune, Alchemy, Extralite, White Industries, etc. which cost 4x as much. I have ~20k miles now on a personal set, and I'm about to replace the rims and keep rolling.

I built all the wheels I trained and raced on in my youth, including the tublars I mentioned earlier. And, I still have my original 36-spoke training wheels with Shimano 600 hubs and Mavic rims. I think they have something like 40K miles, maybe more. I rode them in a century a couple years ago before I built my current road bike.

I think that the market has changed in that the actual skill of building the wheel has been commoditized. So, the value of pre-built wheels is in proprietary components (typically the rims, and sometimes hubs) that are not available through any other channel. So, if you want Zipp or Enve rims, you pretty much need to buy Zipp or Enve wheels built by them.

I agree that an expert can hand-select great parts and build wheels that may be better than a lot of pre-built wheels out there. But, it is more likely that most people will not make those expert choices and get something that is just OK. Plus, factory built wheels like the Ardennes are so good that I would never consider building wheels again. A lot of that "so good" is in the rims. Those Belgium/Ardennes rims, especially the Black version, are peerless, and I do not think that HED sells Belgium Black rims by themselves.

Congrats on the new bike! As others have said, ceramic bearing make an almost immeasurable difference, but if you want to, go ahead.

There's not much weight saving in the bearings. 138g spread over 48 spoke is almost 3 gms/spoke. That seems high, but my memory may be faulty and I didn't double check. I wonder if the CLs have brass nipples?

Anyway for crits, if you don't want to risk expensive wheels, The various Hed Ardennes are a good choice and they're avail be in disc versions. Flo's are great, too. I have both.

excelsports.com has Heds on sale 20% off. For discs, the Ardennes + GP are 560 and the Ardennes + LT are 720. Both sets are around 1560-1580 gms. The LTs have nicer hubs.