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Off the shelf retail store screw-in LED and CFL bulb comparisons

psyphish

Well-known member
Veteran
Noctua fans have a higher static pressure than most pc fans. They can push air through resistance unlike regular fans. This one was only $15

My experiences with 12V fans are with 140mm Noctua Industrials and 120mm Scythe Ultra Kazes.
 

jonhova

Active member
How was your filter constructed diy or pre made? How thick was the carbon layer? What filter material was used? Cylinder Granules or carbon dust? Lotta factors to consider. ID AND OD. Length is important too.

Athos is using the same fan for a premade filter and hes been using it for 2 years?
Inguess you just gotta dial in everything to get it right in yiur setup.
 

ronbo51

Member
Veteran
soler and palau make a 100 cfm and a 150 cfm inline that is almost silent. A little insulation, carpet padding, mine makes very close to no sound. Good choice for larger micro boxes
 

Drop That Sound

Well-known member
Huff, why does cramming 80-100 bulbs into a 4 x 3' fixture sound like a disaster? To me it seems not much different than chaining 4-5 150-200 watt fixtures together. What kinda issues do you foresee?

I already have a dedicated 20 amp circuit for each set of lights so no problems there.. And keep my scrogs flat as a pancake.


96x 9w bulbs. 12 bulbs per row, 8 rows. 4 on/off switches, each one wired to 2 of the rows. In a staggered config. 864 watts

Or like 60 14W bulbs... Great values are 14.80 for a 4 pack right now. More than doubles the price compared to the 9 watt 12 packs.. Would this be better?

I could barely even buy a large enough driver or 2 for COBs for the price of one 96 bulb fixture.

What is the max amount of bulbs anyone has built? At what point does it become cheaper or better to go with other options? Thanks!
 

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jonhova

Active member
Why?? If i had a huge area id use a pre made light that i dont have to wire for 1 week. Replacing bulbs on thst would be stupid annoying and god damn would it be hot at sin.
 

Drop That Sound

Well-known member
I already have 2k crammed in my flower room. I do well.. Just want to spread it out more evenly.

How could 2 850 watt LED fixtures put off more btu's than that?

I can wire and screw 100 sockets and make the whole frame in a few hours. A day if I get fancy with materials. ;)

Watt for watt, why wouldn't this work as well as 800+ watts worth of COBS. The only difference I see is that the fixtures would be at a different height.
 

Drop That Sound

Well-known member
Oh and don't bulbs usually quit working because one or 2 diodes burn out? Couldn't you create a simple jumper by dropping a few blobs of solder over them?

Maybe keep giving back life to old bulbs for awhile, until they are like 75% gone. Seems like it would work, or would the driver overload the remaining diodes?
 
okay first of all YOU ALREADY HAVE THE HPS
these bulbs are GREAT for people who want small scare low investment personal smokes
for under 200ish watt these are by far the cheapest option but when you get over that wattage you gotta look into more efficient lights

there is no point in spending money on something you already have and wont be able to replace it, think about the weight of 100 bulbs, the frame, wiring, sockets, then consider the heat from every single driver, lack of efficiency (these smd still put out only about 100lm per watt, hps has 130? you also lose the intesity, making it impossible to grow long colas/sativas

if you really really really wanna spend 100$ on some extra led watts, grab some 100w ebay cobs and put em on a pentium4 cooler, run 2 chips per driver (or 4) so they run 50 or 25w each, only a few $ on ebay, you can run those at same height as hps
 

Drop That Sound

Well-known member
Cheap under driven Cobs, just hook more into one driver.. Hadn't exactly considered that yet. I worry that if one burns out it would take 1-2 months to get more. They are cheap though so extras would be in order.

I did look at the cheap driver less ones though.. Seems pretty sketchy.

Either way, I would probably just mount them on some square 2 inch aluminum tube, cap the ends, and pump water through it. That was starting to be the plan.

Then I found this thread, and got lost in LED bulb land. Still getting my bulb fix though, been vegging a few on the side, under some 8.5w white and also red/blue 20+ watt PAR bulbs.

Thanks for the input!
 

Mr Pyr0

Member
Cheap under driven Cobs, just hook more into one driver.. Hadn't exactly considered that yet. I worry that if one burns out it would take 1-2 months to get more. They are cheap though so extras would be in order.

I did look at the cheap driver less ones though.. Seems pretty sketchy.

Either way, I would probably just mount them on some square 2 inch aluminum tube, cap the ends, and pump water through it. That was starting to be the plan.

Then I found this thread, and got lost in LED bulb land. Still getting my bulb fix though, been vegging a few on the side, under some 8.5w white and also red/blue 20+ watt PAR bulbs.

Thanks for the input!

Stay clear of the cheap Chinese COB's that have the built in driver on board, as there is no way to run them at lower powers, they are only suitable for floodlights and the light quality is very poor.

Also, if you are mounting COB's on computer heatsinks try and get one with a small fan for cooling, a little trick most people don't know about 4 wire computer fans, if you tie the (normally) blue control wire to ground the fan will run at it's lowest speed without stalling and I've found that just this gentle movement of air is enough to cool the heatsink. Keeps the noise down and no need for messy water cooled setup.

Good luck
 

Drop That Sound

Well-known member
Gotcha, all good tips.

I'll look into the best cheap ones to get. If I made a few smaller rows of them, I could dim my 1ks down to 50 and 75% which would be sweet, and surround the hoods for supplemental lighting.

That way I have the best of both worlds.



Still gonna play around with smaller bulb fixtures. Have a few other projects that could benefit going as well.

Like a micro aquaponic system. And 9 watt bulb DIY string lights, 1 light over each head of lettuce, running along each NFT fence post rail, on another setup.
 
What's a good red to blue bulb Kelvin ratio for flowering. Rn I'm running 11 lights and they're all red. Should I add a couple blues. What's the advantage of running all red compared to some blues thrown in the mix
 
You can use 2700k warm white for everything

2700k even for veg? Red lights make the plant stretch. I veg'd with mostly 5000k and a few 2700k in the mix and I got one bushy little plant. It's way bushier than any other plant I've seen in this thread. Here she is. She's about 7 weeks from seed and 1.5 weeks into flower
 

Chevy cHaze

Out Of Dankness Cometh Light
ICMag Donor
Veteran
No, they won't stretch more under 2700K.
Only if the blue spectrum is missing completely they will stretch, but 2700K LEDs have blue and their overall intensity makes up for the fact that it's not as much as the red.
They're normally white LEDs covered with a layer of phosphorus, and this layer determines the k rating, so it's more of a full spectrum thing than trying to assemble your spectrum from single frequency diodes.
I get relatively squat bushes with only 2700k from seed to harvest!
 
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