muleface
Well-Known Member
I have about a year under me for growing, I have grown under cheap LEDs, Vero 29 cobs, T5s, and Q-boards.
My question is about COBs; really does it matter if they are $2 ebay COBs or $50 Cree 3590's?
Removing the obvious quality difference of the end product, I would assume someone put more time and love into manufacturing a CREE COB, but the end result is really more important thing. If I'm running 50 cobs, we are really talking about a lot of money in cobs, 2.5k in cobs alone. If i went with some cheap ebay cobs, i could get 100 of them for maybe $150, and each time one burns out, toss it, or replace all of them each grow.
What is the practical life of a cree COB? 2 years?
does the end harvest really suffer $2350 in crop loss?
is there an electrical cost that could help mitigate the higher cost of the COBs?
I am really looking for some hard answers here, not a "you get why you pay for" or "i only run CREE" something quantifiable like...
you would need 3 ebay cobs running at 80 watts to get the same light output as 1 cree running at 80 watts, or statistically ebay cobs have a 20% chance of burning down your house.
thanks!
My question is about COBs; really does it matter if they are $2 ebay COBs or $50 Cree 3590's?
Removing the obvious quality difference of the end product, I would assume someone put more time and love into manufacturing a CREE COB, but the end result is really more important thing. If I'm running 50 cobs, we are really talking about a lot of money in cobs, 2.5k in cobs alone. If i went with some cheap ebay cobs, i could get 100 of them for maybe $150, and each time one burns out, toss it, or replace all of them each grow.
What is the practical life of a cree COB? 2 years?
does the end harvest really suffer $2350 in crop loss?
is there an electrical cost that could help mitigate the higher cost of the COBs?
I am really looking for some hard answers here, not a "you get why you pay for" or "i only run CREE" something quantifiable like...
you would need 3 ebay cobs running at 80 watts to get the same light output as 1 cree running at 80 watts, or statistically ebay cobs have a 20% chance of burning down your house.
thanks!