[pHaestus]

I like the Dallas One Wire temperature probes for inexpensive reasonably accurate temperature monitoring. 0.5C accuracy out of box, 0.125C resolution, and not affected by wire length or very sensitive to electrical interferences. Combine a DOW sensor epoxied under the CPU core, a few more for waterblock in and out water temps, a few for air measurement, and then dump everything to log files either with MBM or with Crystalfontz' software (if you use a CF633 for the DOW support). Add in a swissflow flowmeter and measure flow rate as well and you should be able to set it up a fairly simple to use digital testing bench for under $200. Use a spare PC (everyone has those right?) for monitoring the temperatures and logging and K7Burn for loading CPU on test box.