COB heat sinks

Anyone have experience with heat sink/fan combos from MechaTronix? Interested in the model linked below for the Cree CXA3070. Prices seem reasonable but C/W ratings seem exaggerated at first glance..

http://www.led-heatsink.com/seepricesandbuy.php?subcate=972

Imo that's too expensive. You could get a full cpu heatsink with fan on amazon for about 12 dollars that would cool a lot better than that.

The artic alpine 11 plus seems to be what everyone is using due to it's good value (good sink with a 90mm fan)

ficklejester said:

Anyone have experience with heat sink/fan combos from MechaTronix? Interested in the model linked below for the Cree CXA3070. Prices seem reasonable but C/W ratings seem exaggerated at first glance..

http://www.led-heatsink.com/seepricesandbuy.php?subcate=972

Click to expand...

churchhaze said:

Imo that's too expensive. You could get a full cpu heatsink with fan on amazon for about 12 dollars that would cool a lot better than that.

The artic alpine 11 plus seems to be what everyone is using due to it's good value (good sink with a 90mm fan)

Click to expand...

In the grand scheme of things, I was ok spending $30 so $10 sounds good. I was expecting to pay a decent chunk after reading Supra's threads

Expensive.....you can get CPU heat sinks for half of the price of those.

Yeah man check this out.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186070

That's as cheap, easy and fast as it gets. I run 20 cobs at 60w each on each heatsink.

CannaBare said:

Yeah man check this out.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186070

That's as cheap, easy and fast as it gets. I run 20 cobs at 60w each on each heatsink.

Click to expand...

CannaBare hit the nail on the head, this is the most price effective heat sink on the market, and if you want more than one COB you can buy multiple heat sinks than mount them on a housing/case I seen a couple designs just using a metal sheet and those and welding them together made a bad ass light with 4 CXA3070 chips.

You should also look at getting a COB holder so you don't need to solder your LED to the heatsink makes it much easier just bolt on instead.

Yodaweed said:

You should also look at getting a COB holder so you don't need to solder your LED to the heatsink makes it much easier just bolt on instead.

Click to expand...

With the holders, it seems like it would be easy to swap out cobs too. Just clean off the old thermal paste and slap in the new light

ficklejester said:

In the grand scheme of things, I was ok spending $30 so $10 sounds good. I was expecting to pay a decent chunk after reading Supra's threads

Click to expand...

If you are only using a few COBs the CPU heatsink/fan coolers are perfect but if you are building a large build you might be better off with the large heatsink USA heatsinks because they use fan power more efficiently and make the lamp more user friendly. The idea being that you probably wouldnt want 20 or more separate heatsinks to hang with one COB on each.

I agree with supra but their is another option as well. Some people like the cpu coolers since it has its own fan/sink for each cob. You can get 1/8" aluminum sheet dirt cheap $22 for a 2x4 sheet and drill tap 4-40 and mount each heatsink onto it and thermal paste the cob onto the aluminum sheet directly below the heatsink. This gives you even more surface area to dissapate the heat plus a mounting surface for the drivers and fan power plus then you can mount a 1"x1" pieceof angle aluminum 4" long and mount switches on it too control different lights or to change the spectrum... just another way to go about it.

One more option to consider with the alpine 11 coolers is to pick up some thin aluminum angle stock from lowes and drill some holes to mount them into with a nut and bolt. Self tapping screws would work for coolers without mounting holes.

It wouldn't aid cooling, but it would simplify hanging the lights and do could be done with a hand drill.