What kind of budget is required to build one of those units? I was looking at some LEDs the other day and even on CL they are like $700 minimum. I have a 600 HPS right now and once summer hits my temps are going to sore just like last year. So it's either buy a chiller or switch to LED. I don't have the option for A/C where I am right now. Room faces a main walkway and we aren't allowed to put anything in the windows.
Cost I would consider low, much lower then buying a built unit of course. The thing that sold me was I could make the lights to fit my odd space.
For my two fixtures I made for veg cost me around 125 to 150$. But this also includes a lot of materials I will use in future builds like extra wiring, kapton tape, thermal compound, wago connectors, ect.
One fixture runs on a single 1 to 18w+ 300mA driver, and powers two vero 13s in series. The lights and driver were mounted on a 20" long 2.079" wide heatsink, not requiring extra cooling. Actual watts drawn from a single fixture is around 20 to 21w.
When it comes to LEDs and COBs it's not as much about watts then another rating figured from data sheets from the Veros themselves and the drivers capability. It's called PPFD, something like proton count per Sq ft or something, hard for me to understand still.
But my fixtures run 60ppfd each right now, so 120 total for my space, which is on the lower end for veg. Max for flowering is around 1500ppfd.
Like I said I don't completely understand all the numbers yet, learning as I go, but I know they work and do great in flower and veg, I feel like I'm just scraping at the surface lol