From my perspective...
There's 3 or 4 kinds of testing (depending on everyone's perspective):
1-system testing: that's the old PC test.
2-Comparative testing with PCs
3-Comparative testing with a testbench (heat die)
4-Analytical testing with a testbench (is there any other way?)
The issue then becomes about repeatability, aka the ability to reproduce the same results, wether it's in one day or one year from now.
Accuracy is important, mostly in analytical testing, because you want, as much as possible, to come up with a result that can be achieved with another completely different analytical test bench: that way, you have a true measure of a block.
When I decided to get in on testing, I knew what challenge I was facing, and I knew the extent of the work that it was going to involve, just to get to that one day when I can test that first block.
I also expect to make errors on the way, but I am confident that I can get it done, even though my education only consists of 4 years of college (2 in Applied Science, 1 in Electronics, and 1 in PCs). The only part I won't get into, is custom electronics, like that fan controller to maintain a specific water temp that I mentionned some time back, or that CPU ammeter (by Groth), because my confidence level there is low. (I would be more than likely left with a bunch of unused parts!)
The real issue here, is wether any testing out there is significant. "System testing" just doesn't have the accuracy to return meaningful results to anyone else but the tester, so it's really important to keep that in mind. Given that, there's still a need to reconcile testbench results with PCs, so pHaestus' work here is of the highest value (yes, I've been watching!). Those CPU temp results are really important.
On a personal note, I've come to accept ProCooling as a place to be criticized, so when I need that, I'll post something. Otherwise, I intend to keep a lower profile, and try to catch some of that "education" that's become so rare here. I'd love to stir things up again, to further advance all of our knowledge in all this, but I don't care to deal with the attitudes of some: seems to me like there's more interest in flaming/bashing, then an actual willingness to work together to learn/figure out things.
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