MGE Vigor 500W Power Supply

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Back to the matter at hand. Though the Vigor may be the
low man on the totem pole, so to speak, it’s certainly no slouch. In
today’s PSU market, you’ve got to differentiate your product if you
want it to sell, & the Vigor’s certainly got a lot of “extra’s”
that make it a PSU worth looking into. Let’s check it out.
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The Vigor’s box declare’s that it’s SATA “enabled,” which,
unfortunately, means that it it doesn’t have the native SATA connectors
that you’ll find on the Magnum and the Vortec. Don’t fret, however, as
XG has included two molex-to-SATA power adapters if you’ve got a new
drive that doesn’t have both power connectors on it.

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Out of the box, you’ll immediately notice that there are lots of things
that differentiate this PSU from the majority of PSU’s on the market.
First, instead of having an exhaust fan mounted at the rear of the
unit, XG has placed a second 80mm intake fan on the exterior, inside
your case.

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I felt that this was a good idea, as it lead to
less noise in the rear of the case. The second thing you’ll notice is
that this baby’s got windows! Each side of the Vigor has a blue
plexiglass window that lets the lights from the LED fans (two of ‘em)
shine through.

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The bottom of the unit is vented via the
second LED fan, this time a nice, hefty 120mm job.

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The rear
of the unit is fan-less, but well vented in the honeycomb style.

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The back also sports a fan speed control knob so
that you can quiet the fans down if you feel the need.

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{mospagebreak title=MGE Vigor – Finish and Specs}
Other things that set this unit apart are the looming & the finish.
All of the Vigor’s cable leads are loomed with blue nylon, making wire
management much easier. I also appreciated the extra grip that they
provided on the power connectors – no more wiggling to pull ‘em out.

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The finish on the exterior of the unit is
almost mirror-like.  After taking all of my photos, I
found myself wiping it down to get my greasy paw-prints off.. it’s that
nice.

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On to the specs.

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I was a bit worried about the Vigor,
because the combined output on the 5.5v & 3v rails was only listed
as a total of 220W; a bit lower than I was used to. However, my
concerns were un-founded, as you’ll see below in my voltage
measurements. I measured the voltage using Asus’ PC Probe software. The
system setup is as follows:

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My previous PSU was an Enermax Noisetaker 370W (EG375P-VE-SFMA) which
has dual 12v rails, & a higher rating on the combined 5.5v & 3v
rails. I was to discover, however, that the extra juice that the Vigor
kicked out was more than sufficient to keep up. What I did to test was
read the lowest voltage output of each reading on the Asus software,
& run a variety of tasks: at idle, while gaming, & while
watching a DVD. Without further ado, here are the results:

As you can see, the Vigor bested the Enermax in almost every category.
Although the Enermax was rated much lower, I feel that the dual 12v
rails & the higher 5v & 3.3v output rating made it a decent
match-up. The Vigor is certainly a solid performer, & I never
experienced any issues with it. It is, in fact, still in my primary
gaming rig right now, & will stay there until, perhaps, I get a
Magnum to review

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{mospagebreak title=MGE Vigor – Action Shots}
But wait, you’re saying, what about the action shots?!?!? I save the best for last, my friends. Feast your eyes on these:

Here we see the bottom 120mm fan.

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Here’s a nice shot
of the window getting its good use, along with the 80mm intake fan.

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This is what the unit looks like from the rear when
powered up

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Finally, if you think that adding a PSU
with lights doesn’t really affect the look from the outside of your
case, check out this shot, with the Enermax installed

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&
compare it to this shot, with the Vigor installed

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Definite
noticable improvement, especially in the
upper left corner there. And finally, for those of you who still don’t
think MGE/XG has anything to offer, check out this shot of the MGE
Titanium case & the MGE Vigor all in one awesome shot. Yes, that’s
right, everything in this shot came as-is. No extra purchases except
for the CPU fan.

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