4x4 vero29 quesion

well rapid led is gonna sell me 3 kits with the heat sinks. for 70 dollars less . so thats 150 for 3 vero29 gen 7 and 1 Mean Well HLG-240H-C2100B, now i just gotta figure out the heat sinks.

hybridcheef said:

so if i were to go into one of these places what would i exactly ask for. how thick of aluminum and can fins be made on the aluminum there?

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Fins no, but what i was suggesting was an active cooling solution. For some reason people around here seem to hate active cooling, which to me makes not much sense. With active cooling you would spend a tiny bit more power to run a fan off your heatsink but its very effective. If you know anything about PC building its basically how all CPU's are cooled in a computer is by having a heatsink with a fan on the back of it.

With passive cooling (no fans ect) the extrusions and pins are very important because the way they dissipate heat is by having a large surface area. With active cooling you dont necessarily need the extrusions (but they do still help lots) because you have a fan attached to it creating airflow blowing the heat off it. If you went with active cooling its generally less expensive to make but over the longterm its more expensive because you are using power for the fan on it. If active cooling is the way you go, all you would need is to figure out the dimensions of the backplate you want the cobs mounted to and then purchase a plate of aluminum that size. Then you mount the cobs to it and on the back side mount a couple of PC case fans to the back of it. The airflow of the fan is what ends up cooling it, not the surface area just disipating heat.

One major drawback to active cooling tho is if for some reason your fan fails and you dont know it and the light is still running it will end up overheating and you can end up frying it. There are ways to add thermal fuses tho to eliminate that risk.

Hope that explains active cooling vs passive cooling.

With small fan on heatsink you actually cool COBs better. And it consumes maximum 2W, which is maybe 5 bucks per year? Passive heatsinks are heavier and they not cool down COBs like those with little fans can. And they're not cheaper.