  We give an improved estimate of the detectability of gravitational waves from
magnetically confined mountains on accreting neutron stars. The improved
estimate includes the following effects for the first time: three-dimensional
hydromagnetic ("fast") relaxation, three-dimensional resistive ("slow")
relaxation, realistic accreted masses $M_a \la 2 \times 10^{-3} M_\odot$,
(where the mountain is grown ab initio by injection), and verification of the
curvature rescaling transformation employed in previous work. Typically, a
mountain does not relax appreciably over the lifetime of a low-mass X-ray
binary. The ellipticity reaches $\epsilon \approx 2 \times 10^{-5}$ for
$M_a=2\times 10^{-3} M_\odot$. The gravitational wave spectrum for triaxial
equilibria contains an additional line, which, although weak, provides valuable
information about the mountain shape. We evaluate the detectability of magnetic
mountains with Initial and Advanced LIGO. For a standard, coherent matched
filter search, we find a signal-to-noise ratio of $d = 28 (M_a/10^{-4} M_\odot)
  (1+5.5 M_a/10^{-4} M_\odot)^{-1} (D/10 \mathrm{kpc})^{-1} (T_0/14
  \mathrm{d})^{1/2}$ for Initial LIGO, where $D$ is the distance and $T_0$ is
the observation time. From the nondetection of gravitational waves from
low-mass X-ray binaries to date, and the wave strain limits implied by the spin
frequency distribution of these objects (due to gravitational wave braking), we
conclude that there are other, as yet unmodelled, physical effects that further
reduce he quadrupole moment of a magnetic mountain, most notably sinking into
the crust.
