Almost done with my all LED conversion. HID is gone baby gone

I had my flower room previously setup with 4 HID's, 2 qb's, and 2 COB's. Ventilation had to cool all 4 lights that required 2 inline heavy duty fans. That's all gone now. Ventilation has changed completely as have the needs of the room. Now i only have 1 exhaust fan hooked to a carbon filter and 1 intake fan pulling air into the room during lights on. Passive during lights off. I had all 4 qb's cranking last night at full power for the first time since initiating flower 6 days ago. They took it like a champ. The first 5 days was a little nerve racking. I'm use to the usual veg to flower shock the plants always go through and nothing much changed with all LED. After the first week the plants are accustomed to the new light cycle and intensity. I'm finishing this cycle with 4 qb's and 2 COB's. 3x660w qb's, 1x 450w qb, and 2x 100w COB's. Summer is very hot, so I don't like to push the room too hard with heat output. Otherwise the AC is cranking non stop and I'm not interested in anymore $825 electric bills at the moment. After this cycle we'll be into the cool weather so I'll be adding 2x460w LED qb's which maxes out my lighting for the flower room. Any more heat would require a mini split. I don't want to do that yet. Costly venture. So far the portable AC is serving the needs of the room without issue.

Once the new boards arrive via express sea from my vendor on alibaba in about 40 days I'll be winding down my current flower cycle. As soon as the room is clean I'll add the 2x 460w qb's where my 600w HPS's use to be. Should workout as a perfect replacement without sacrificing yield or flower density. That puts the room at:
3x660w qb's
2x460w qb's
1x450w qb
2x100w COB's
for a grand total of 3550w. I'm looking forward to seeing the yield on my next flower cycle in which the room is operating at the same intensity as my previous HID setup. This is my 4th order with the same vendor on alibaba. Fair prices and excellent hardware with name brand components.

This is the 460w unit I ordered 2 of for about $475 with sea shipping:

This is a picture from about 2 1/2 weeks ago. You can at least see the way the current qb's are setup. I plan to move the 2 660's in front closer together by about 8" then mount the 460's in the very front of the room. Coverage should be beautiful wall to wall. At least I hope



Here's a pic of the previous light setup. Those 600's in the front is where the 460's will go. I feel like that'll be even better coverage than before with HID's allover the place:

So yesterday during lights off I popped on the 'ol green headlight and went to work mounting a 200cfm vortex inline fan blowing over the 660w qb, 450w qb, and two 100w COBs. It's a bit different cooling qb's as I have just discovered. It's really something I hadn't even considered as necessary until I realized how much heat was generating on the drivers, boards, and LED's with the number of lights I have in the room now. Heat is what burns out drivers and diodes prematurely not to mention the possibility of frying your canopy. Scope out the pic below to see how I mounted the inline. I plan to get another 200cfm vortex to cool the other two 660's in the front of the other qb's so all lights will have a steady stream of high volume air flowing right across the boards and drivers. I can put my hand right on the driver after 11.5 hours of lights on without any discomfort. Beautiful. I'm finding that LED qb's require just as many inline fans as HID, but the heat output is significantly less and the AC hasn't run once yet in the hottest part of summer. Another $100 investment for that vortex and the cooling setup for all lights will be complete.

Since there is no resistance (i.e. ducting / carbon filter) on the fan that's cooling the light it really moves a fuck ton of air. I installed 6" mesh louvers over the intake and exhaust of that fan so nothing can get sucked into the fan ruining my equipment. Here are some pics of the setup. The garden is a little smaller this cycle due to summer heat and light upgrades, but I've got 2 more 460w qb's on the way which will get the room up to previous capacity then it'll be wall to wall again.

The specific reason I like the inline fans for cooling the qb's is because the air is direct and concentrated to a small vortex of air versus a hurricane style fan that blows a large swath of air. Why is this important? Direct air on plants plus heat from the boards and intensity from the lights can easily fry your canopy by dehydrating the leaves. No direct air. Ever. The inline fan solves this problem while tying up a very small amount of real estate in the garden. As you can see it's tucked in there nice n tight just above the COB in the back: