As far as the chips are concerned, the pool being PPS+ or PPLNS has NO DIFFERENCE.

You may be referring to the downtime when switching, as typically done by Nicehash. This should not be an issue with the #xnsub option enabled.

To OP: The reasoning behind it is that the Antminers get hotter when they disconnect from a pool. But needing to use PPS+ is false. ViaBTC in both modes use the miners identically (and PPS+ is the default anyway). You can do the same test on any pool, such as ckpool and its perfectly valid, if not better simply because the pool operator might help you diagnose things. Kanopool is out of the question, because the operator will ban you.

Yes there is another advantage to testing in ckpool: You don't need an user account to use it, you can just use your bitcoin address.