both dont let anyone discourage you with that bullshit ass poor heatsink design its not important unless your LED gets way hot and mine certainly does not so i dont see the need for an insanely beefy heat sink with fins and a lot of surface area, the flat plate of aluminum is workin just fine. I greatly dislike bridgelux LED's and i forget who was saying that blackstar uses them as well as cree but i dont think that is the case i asked victor he said cree ONLY
Is there any technical information or Grow Journals that back up the claim that heat sinks aren't needed? I find that very misleading.
If you look at the tech specs on ANY led they are thermally sensitive in both output intensity and spectrum stability. Feel free to doubt me and check it out yourself. I you go on any of the manufacturers web sites (of LED's) you can download their pdf product manuals. Their output is rated at T=25C. As the temp goes up the spectrum shifts downward and output decreases. I'm not talking huge amounts of heat. On many LED's by 35C their output has shifted by more than 30nm. When you are dealing with LED's who's output is only supposed to have a 40nm range that is a ton. It will put 75% of the output of the LED out of the intended spectral range.
For our purposes intensity and spectrum stability is critical to yield. Heat dissapation is very important. LED's are packed into a standard case with a plastic shield on the bottom. That's a lot of LED's producing heat in a small area with minimal air flow so the back side is the only place to cool them. I know that the air circulating out of the case doesn't feel hot but that not necessarily a good thing. It either means you have sufficient cooling or inadequate surface area to dissapate heat and transfer energy from the source to the coolant (air).
THE ONLY PANELS THAT DONT USE HEAT SINKS ARE THE CHEAP ONES. It's the ebay chineese ones and Blackstar that seem to figure heat sinks are unecessary. Stealth Grow, Penetrator, Spectra, ISIS, Magnum all use heat sinks. The only journals that I have seen that are producing anywhere near the heralded 1g per watt are Stealth Grow, Penetrator, Spectra and ISIS. Magnum is made by the same company as ISIS but is too new to have been proven so feel free to ignore that one.
I have not seen a grow journal that EXCULSIVELY used chinees knock offs or Blackstar that got anywhere near 1g per watt. Lots of people are using Blackstar and swear by them but no one has posted actual yields that compare to the other manufacturers.
I know a lot of people are using Blackstar and everytime someone new asks for an LED recommendation everyone jumps in suggesting Blackstar. I don't think that's fair to the people asking the question.
I am running 357 Magnums but I haven't suggested them ONCE because they aren't proven and until I can put up numbers the recommendation is WORTHLESS.
Blackstar is cheap, it grows pot (a third of a gram per watt is the best I've seen so far) and at that price point it is pretty much the only option for many growers. Can we leave it at that? Can we please stop saying that they are great or better than other panels or that heat sinks aren't needed or other such UNPROVEN claims until someone with Blackstar actually posts decent numbers.
Maybe Blackstar is fly like a G6 but with all the people using them you'd think by now there would be ONE journal to back that up.
Blackstar people feel free to flame me ....but add a link to the Blackstar journal that shows them growing anything over 1/3 of a gram per watt
.......and remember I'm LED too and I love you guys