Best LED's For The Money

Hello All:

First post from a first time grower so bare with me. I have a 4'x4' tent with seedlings progressing nicely towards veg. I started the seedlings on a Mars 300 when they were ready and planned on using between 2-4 Mars 300's for my grow as I was given them for free from a friend but I am quickly finding out that I will not be very happy with the results after reading through the forums a bit. I don't care about massive yields as I am growing for personal use but would obviously like to use something that will produce good results. What are your suggestions for the best LED's for the money? Budget would be approximately $500 for the 4'x4' tent if at all possible. I would like LED's that could provide light for both cycles. Thank you all in advance! It is much needed and appreciated.


Sean

This one

Check out the quantum boards thread. $500 is cutting it close for a COB fixture to cover your area, even if you build it yourself.

I spent about $400 on 6 COBs, heatsinks and a driver for about 300 watts and a fixture that could *maybe* cover 36"x48". I'll be using it in a 20"x46" closet

Bridgelux eb series, COB, quantum boards, come to mind for this one.

Light spectrum 3k-3,5k for both veg and flower seem to be the middle of the road. I replaced a Mars 600 with a Quantum board setup.

Sounds like the budget is being upped. New plan will be to continue veg with the Mars for now and work on building a COB, quantum board or a combination of the two for the flower tent and then circle back and do the same for veg while my planes are in the flower tent. Problem being I need to get this new fixture built and tested in less than 6 weeks. I started reading the quantum board thread but can anyone point me in the right direction on where I should be looking to buy parts and pieces from and do you know of any schematics that someone has already built for a 4x4 flower tent that I could follow? Thanks!

If you want to build your own light Rapidled got some good stuff, I bought a grand worth not too long ago for a 4x8 flower room
6-8 CXB diodes with lens and reflectors with 1 driver and Heatsink to match the diodes and a few other item will run you 500 give or take

i would do citi 1212s in 4 rows of 4 centered in the 4x4. they are like ~12 a piece from cobkits. one hlg 600h- 36b at about 170 after discount, 16 120mm heatsinks(budget killer) still need misc stuff like holders, thermal paste etc. you could save some cash by doing 3 rows of 3 and stepping the driver down to one of the new hlg 420s

DesertHydro said:

i would do citi 1212s in 4 rows of 4 centered in the 4x4. they are like ~12 a piece from cobkits. one hlg 600h- 36b at about 170 after discount, 16 120mm heatsinks(budget killer) still need misc stuff like holders, thermal paste etc. you could save some cash by doing 3 rows of 3 and stepping the driver down to one of the new hlg 420s

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Whats the discount for cobkits? about to order from him and a discount would be killer

DesertHydro said:

i would do citi 1212s in 4 rows of 4 centered in the 4x4. they are like ~12 a piece from cobkits. one hlg 600h- 36b at about 170 after discount, 16 120mm heatsinks(budget killer) still need misc stuff like holders, thermal paste etc. you could save some cash by doing 3 rows of 3 and stepping the driver down to one of the new hlg 420s

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Thank you! Should I go with 90CRI 1212's at 3,500K across the board? Seems like I could almost mimic the Timber 600w 4'x4' set but add 4 rows of 4 in leu of 3. Which holders are better from Cobs? Should I get the 90 degree reflectors too? I'll probably order stuff this week. Anywhere else to get heat sinks from? Seems like Cobs is out of a lot of the stuff needed.

DesertHydro said:

i would do citi 1212s in 4 rows of 4 centered in the 4x4. they are like ~12 a piece from cobkits. one hlg 600h- 36b at about 170 after discount, 16 120mm heatsinks(budget killer) still need misc stuff like holders, thermal paste etc. you could save some cash by doing 3 rows of 3 and stepping the driver down to one of the new hlg 420s

Click to expand...

How efficient is the citizen compare to cxb3590?
Are they that cheap? Not that i wouldn't mind sticking with the CXB but I'm still getting more lighting for a 4x8 and if the citizen can out performs cree I would like to it side by side

I got the cree CXB for 47 bucks and that's with the lens and reflectors all together and its solderless
I didn't trust going to alibaba for led so I went to rapidled

CBD Head said:

Whats the discount for cobkits? about to order from him and a discount would be killer

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RIU in the box

IhateLockDoors said:

How efficient is the citizen compare to cxb3590?
Are they that cheap? Not that i wouldn't mind sticking with the CXB but I'm still getting more lighting for a 4x8 and if the citizen can out performs cree I would like to it side by side

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i wanna say that the 3000k and 3500k are right around ~140 lm/w when you dont drive them like an asshole lol. i under drive mine so efficiency isnt a factor for me.

if you are gonna do like 1 cob per sq ft and under drive it makes more money sense to do the 1212s. they lose their benefit if you push them hard as the big guys. i ordered 32 of those and 32 cxm22s just the other day. gonna have a ~1200w table and a ~1600w table and see who wins in the GPW battle

Hurdbird said:

Thank you! Should I go with 90CRI 1212's at 3,500K across the board? Seems like I could almost mimic the Timber 600w 4'x4' set but add 4 rows of 4 in leu of 3. Which holders are better from Cobs? Should I get the 90 degree reflectors too? I'll probably order stuff this week. Anywhere else to get heat sinks from? Seems like Cobs is out of a lot of the stuff needed.

Click to expand...

i did all mine in the 80CRI. you get more lm/w that way. im not sure the benefit of doing higher CRI. i think its still up for debate.

DesertHydro said:

i wanna say that the 3000k and 3500k are right around ~140 lm/w when you dont drive them like an asshole lol. i under drive mine so efficiency isnt a factor for me.

if you are gonna do like 1 cob per sq ft and under drive it makes more money sense to do the 1212s. they lose their benefit if you push them hard as the big guys. i ordered 32 of those and 32 cxm22s just the other day. gonna have a ~1200w table and a ~1600w table and see who wins in the GPW battle

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Nice, I would love to know how that goes, keep me updated when you get it up and running, are you running coco medium?

no. i switched from coco to rockwool. i just finished doing a rockwool flood and drain and a coco hand watered setup side by side and the difference is aesthetics alone was enough to sway me. the rockwool plants were WAY over vegged, over crowded and got heat stressed badly by the light and they still looked pretty nice, just a little more fluffly than normal for this cut. the coco buds are very dark in comparison. i will be testing them for potency and terpenes in the near future.

everything in the picture is the same cut, just different growth parameters

I saw a thread on here, by rahz, i think. Side by side comparison on Kelvin and cri, it got kinda fucked, but interesting to watch.

DesertHydro said:

no. i switched from coco to rockwool. i just finished doing a rockwool flood and drain and a coco hand watered setup side by side and the difference is aesthetics alone was enough to sway me. the rockwool plants were WAY over vegged, over crowded and got heat stressed badly by the light and they still looked pretty nice, just a little more fluffly than normal for this cut. the coco buds are very dark in comparison. i will be testing them for potency and terpenes in the near future.

everything in the picture is the same cut, just different growth parameters

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Are you going to do another run with the 2 going head to head again? Was this enough to conclude anything? Are you satisfied with result? I mean it looks great and I'm curious as to how you will compensate for the over vegging of the one in rockwool and dial in on it

MediheaLed said:

I saw a thread on here, by rahz, i think. Side by side comparison on Kelvin and cri, it got kinda fucked, but interesting to watch.

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What was the final result of that?