Definitely expensive but proven. Plus you wont burn down your house if you hook it up wrong. The "best" isnt always the proper setup, and those things are expensive.
Running a Platinum P4-XML2 and an older Mars in a 4X4. Have a BestVa 1200 on the way. Is the BestVa the best? Nope. Got really good reviews on Amazon though. Love the price tag also. This will give me time to piece together my next lights and do it correctly.
I respect that. Work with what you have. When I bought my platinum I was convinced I was buying the best. It didn't do bad at all. It was one of the better panels out there in sheer performance when you compared it to the mars II series and the other direct competitors that came out at the same time. I've grown with them though and when I switched to more efficient white light leds my grow op's grow efficiency went up over 50% from near 1g/watt to more like 1.5g/watt plus. If you think the drivers and diodes in the Platinum, old mars, and bestva lights are more reliable for fire safety then the components your typical DIY qb light are built with you're probably mistaken. All of those lights are using cheap drivers that are not that reliable or efficient and older led diodes that were much more prone to burning out then any of the new stuff. Take your platinum light apart and look at what is inside. Like me you probably won't be that impressed. Like I said 3 of my 5 fans have failed or make noises. If they skimped that much on the fans what corners did they cut on the rest of the light? The drivers most people use on these qb builds are meanwell HLG series, the most heavy duty you can get that are waterproof and rated to run outdoors. The drivers in the platinum light are pieces of crap by comparison. You can't even dim those lights. Like that's a huge feature. Should be a feature on any light over $200. Look up qb288 torture test on youtube. I still have not seen one successfully burnt up. That video shows one taking over 600 watts to a single board and working fine. You might not realize how cheap you can put together one of these fixtures. If the parts are available you can build a 300 watt fixture that's the size of the p900 for $210.
100%, I would rather have a DIY qb light running at my home while I'm not there I built myself then a bestva from amazon that some factory that could give two craps if it fails built in China. I would probably have no real legal recourse to them if it burned my house down. If you're comparing mystery Chinese parts to samsung leds and meanwell drivers I'll take the later all day for reliability. My entire current setup cost the same as my p900 and p450 and would grow circles around them.
Just wanted to post the specs to see what you guys think. The PAR graph is for the 1000W, so add the difference between the 2 lights.
The 2000w is the only one putting out good enough par numbers to actually grow dense large colas. Target par range for maximum bud development in flower is 750-1100par. My 175 watt qb96 elite boards read about 1000 at 18" directly under the boards. The fact that it takes so many more watts to not even get close to those par numbers with bestva shows the inefficiency of their diodes. Here's a par chart with 4 qb96's in a 4x4. New Quantum board qb96 V2's are out from HLG. Cob replacement fixture-Replacement Thread **BS here** As you can see the qb96 outperforms the bestva with numbers above 800 par at about 120 watts per board range.
Not a huge fan of either of those fixtures unless you're scared to DIY. It's so much cheaper. 4 qb96's and two HLG-320h-54a drivers would outperform either the 550v2 or the 600. Likely for cheaper. It's less then $600 for a 4 board qb96 elite setup for flower. 700 watts max power potential as well. The 550 uses a meanwell 480h driver and the 600 uses the 600h driver. Dual 320's have more power potential and the light spectrum of the qb96 is superior to the qb288 IMO.
2018-BAVA-hlg-65-grow-led-board by RecliningCough posted Feb 12, 2019 at 10:22 PM Bloom Lights by RecliningCough posted Feb 11, 2019 at 4:17 PM My setup is doing great - have not put a full run through yet - first full run going though now since upgrade to new light I run 8 of the HLG 65s and 4 of the old burple lights in a 5x10 area spent under 500.00 on all of my lights both veg and bloom rooms combined
Props bro. Looking good! I know I can do it cheaper, but time is more important, and it will be under warranty. I just want to run 1 light for now and see how far I can go with it. Simple is more important to me.
Tbone try craigslist, I finally sold my solarstorms, funded my qbs. I won't ever go back to blurple. I had not tried qbs when I sold mine so I didn't feel the least bit bad for the guy, now might be a different story, it would be hard to talk up a used light when I know of a brand new setup that will smoke them for a hundred bucks less than I was asking. So if you are out there used solarstorm dude, sorry, but thanks, I would have never tried qbs without you.