Square cooler mash tun: braid or manifold

I'm going to attempt my first all grain brew this weekend, and I need to build the mash tun this week. I was going to buy a round cooler from HD, but Lowes had a 40L square cooler for not much more than the 5 gallon I was looking at. I bought a 12" section of stainless braid for the round cooler, but I'm thinking it will be too small for the square one. Which would be better for a noob such as myself? If I do a manifold, I haven't decided on copper or PVC.

IMO If you are going to batch sparge get the braid. It's way less work than cutting all of the slots for the manifold. It's also probably slightly cheaper, but it depends on your specific design. If you are going to fly sparge, you will likely need to build the manifold. I'd go with CPVC because it is way cheaper than copper. I just built a mash tun with the braid and it works fine. You don't really have to worry about it being too small because the liquid isn't really running down the length of the braid. It's just running out the bulk head and the braid is acting as a strainer.

Thanks, I'll try to braid and see how it works. I was planing on batch sparge.

I started batch sparging with a stainless braid and now I'm fly sparging with the same braid. I'm consistently getting 85% efficiency with my setup.

I have a braid, but I put a stainless steel compression spring in it so that it doesn't crush. I also used the larger water heater braids. see here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/bcs-based-electric-brewery-build-version-1-1-a-156729/#post1805703