Hehe, that will not be happing for me. I decided I didn't want the liability. The market just isn't there to support it anyway on any of the projects I was pondering, not just water blocks. I am staying with the DIY theme. :D

If I reviewed a water block, I wouldn't advance any ideas for improvement: I'd just stick to reviewing the block. Otherwise, I'd be more than happy to charge a consultant fee for my opinions. :D

This is the only kind of review that is really expensive to do, to my knowledge, because of all the work and equipment involved. When I build a testbench, you can bet I'm going to put it to good use.

The only issue I'm debating for myself, is what kind of position am I putting myself in, if I start making and selling a water block, while I review others? Obviously all the blocks are publicly available, so it shouldn't be a big deal, right? Bill reviewed blocks, and had testing services on the side, so I'd be doing something similar, no? :shrug:

Conflict of intrest. If your block just happen to perform better than any other block on the planet you will get called biased and get blamed for no objectivity. Not a position you want to be in IMO.

Once you establish yourself as a maker of water-blocks, you then cannot expect the public to hold your results, especially if they show your products beating currently shipping competing products, with anything less than derision.

It's not the intent, integrity, or the honesty of the tester being called into question, it's the simple nature of a direct conflict of interest. The onus is on the tester then to establish a lack of bias through independent unbiased review, which immediately renders the manufacturer's own competitor analysis totally toothless.

Okay for a manufacturer to rank their own products against each other though.

If you want a classic example, look no further than Apple's recent "World Fastest PC" claim, and boy has their lack of independence been slapped around for that one.

Hum... yeah, thanks. Keyword here: "Once you establish yourself as a maker of water-blocks", at least I'm not there either. :(

Testing is going to be my first project, but not by choice. I can't make this block until I have the testbench... So I'd be established as a tester, before a block maker. I suspect I'd have to quit testing (aka reviewing), if I went into block making, full time. That seems reasonable, no?

Wouldn't a solution be to not post the results of your own block? (That assumes, of course, that you're testing for fun (or, I guess, for comparitive results) rather than to show that your block is good)

Not really. Who's to say he isn't making the other blocks look bad. Also who wants the competition to be testing your blocks. Could be legal problems if his design resembles the others (reverse enginering).