Using the Xilence PSU tester

manveruppd · 9 Feb 2009 at 13:55

OK, I don't really understand the readings on this thing. When I plugged in just the 24-pin plug, it reported the second 12V rail as too low. Then the penny dropped and I plugged in the 4-pin plug as well, and both 12V rails were within spec. However, on the far right edge of the screen there was the message "PG=0ms" and I have NO IDEA what that means! :confused:

I just wanted to test my SATA power cable tbh, because I've been finding errors on my HDD and I suspect it's due to insufficient power to them, but it doesn't seem to be able to test a single power cable alone. With the 2 main motherboard connectors plugged into it, plugging my SATA cable into it made no visible difference to the readings on the screen - how do I test that alone?

bremen1874 · 9 Feb 2009 at 14:36

The PG time is presumably the delay before the PSU returns a Power Good signal. I don't think you've a problem.

manveruppd · 9 Feb 2009 at 15:16

I strongly suspect I DO though...

The backstory is... last summer I began having multiple problems with both my drives, and within a few days they had escalated to the point where the BIOS wouldn't even recognise them during boot. After lots of testing and replacing bits I realised that what had been at fault was the SATA power cable - as soon as I replaced it, everything worked fine!

Now, yesterday I ran CHKDSK to prepare for a good long defrag session, and it found a good few errors. I let it repair them, and then ran it again just to be sure, and it found MORE errors! I thought the hard drive might be going, so I tested it with Speedfan and it only scored 76%, which worried me. I ran a chkdsk on my other drive's partitions, and it found lots of errors there too. However, the other drive scores 92% on Speedfan.

So, bottom line is, it's unlikely for both drives to be going at the same time (especially with one of them scoring 92%), so it must be the power supply. I don't have yet another SATA power cable to replace it with, and, tbh, if two cables go within 6 months then the PSU itself must be the underlying cause. The question remains: how do I test the SATA power cable alone?

bremen1874 · 9 Feb 2009 at 16:14

I just meant that the PS=0ms wasn't a problem.

The easiest way to test the voltages on the SATA connectors would be to buy or borrow a Digital Multimeter.