COB or HID/HPS

I think that until there is a mass produced cob light from a commercial company, COB lights only make sense if you are building your own. Price is still very high as it is new tech, and at the speed COB's are advancing, this years will be replaced with the latest and greatest pretty quick. Just my 2 cents.

 

Those Luminous Cobs are $12 a piece from mouser.

I use cob's so im not trying to bash them, just saying that the only way cobs beat out hid is if you build your own. Otherwise the extra you are paying cancels out any of the benefits of cobs, aside from the lower temps.

 

Don't

Dont Forget lifespan, and power savings

 

Just google Cob grow light. First company on the list has fair prices on the high end cobs.

Their frames are overpriced.

 

I would look more into what a company is running them and that they are powering them with as well. Some are a lot more efficient than others.

I have a cob led unit very nice but yes very $$$. If you have time and want to learn I suggest watching every thing from growmau .

Make it your self save a lot and get what you need. Best luck to you.

 

The extra cost is worth it for the better efficiency.

I really stand by my recommendation of building your own. There are some very detailed threads on here showing exactly how. You would get alot more for your money and upgrading is easier if you understand how it works.

 

Its really not that difficult.
Alot of people run a single driver for each high powered cob for simplicity's sake.
If you aren't comfortable drilling and tapping the heatsink, choose a cob and holder that have an off the shelf predrilled heatsink.

 

The first question you have to answer is how many plants you are going to attempt to flower. Each light is only good for covering so much sq. footage and you don't want to overload the lights you do have with too many plants and rob from them all. We flower with 1000 watt HPS lamps (air cooled hoods because they do make some serious heat) and run 2 plants under each lamp. We run a 10 week cycle and the average yield per plant ranges from 3.5 to 4-5+ oz after dry and cure per plant. Each plant is different...grows different, has it's own developmental path, so you can't treat the whole crop as a bunch. Each plant has to be individually tended.

But to figure out what lighting you need, you need a finite number of plants you plan to flower. From that point, you can figure out what you need in the way of lighting. But it is, by far, THE most important equipment you will have in your grow room. Nutes don't grow plants...they're just plant food. LIGHT grows plants. Each needs good wattage and plenty of space to penetrate the canopy of the plant.

It pretty much comes down to budget and coverage. LEDs, for the most part, are small bodied lights than only shine straight down and do not reflect outward which limits the sq. footage they cover. So it's going to take more lamps to sufficiently cover several plants with LEDs than it would with HPS because you can get reflectors on the hoods for the HPS. However, more plants doesn't necessarily get you more weed at harvest time. You can always harvest more from a single plant that gets all the good strong lighting it needs during flower and is properly tended, than you can by attempting to flower 3 in the same space because you shade out growth by cramming them together. If you only have enough lighting to flower a single plant, then do a single plant and get the most possible out of it.

HPS pros and cons:
Pros: Plants love them and grow like crazy. Excellent bud development and plant size as long as you have the wattage. Much more economical at the moment than LEDs since good quality LEDs prices are still through the roof. The demand hasn't caught up with the technology at this point.
Cons: THEY GET REAL HOT. If you are flowering in a small space, HPS is going to make heat an issue so you have to have ventilation/ducting in place to pull the heat out of the space.

LED:
Pros: LEDs grow out some beautiful buds. They also don't draw quite as much electricity while they work. But the coverage area is drastically limited as far as the sq. footage, and you should never be forced to raise your lamps just to cover more plants. You need sufficient lighting for every plant you are flowering. LEDs are much cooler than the HPS lamps but they burn hotter to the plants, especially seedlings, so you have to be very careful when using them in the veg cycle not to burn your plants.
Cons: To get lamps of any quality with LEDs, you're going to have to lay down big bucks. The lamps you're looking at, for that price, are cheaply made in China (likely) with the cheapest of components and labor and then floated on a ship to where you are. Lots of people use these cheap lights...some positive experinces, some not, but it's a risk you have to take if you go that route. A good quality 800 watt LED averages somewhere around a grand for a good American made high quality lamp. So you can see the difference in the pricing. The demand hasn't caught the technology yet. Eventually the prices will begin to fall.

But what you need actually should be determined by how many plants you project to flower. To get the most from each plant, it needs wattage. When you consider that the sun is the great "light source," and that man hasn't come up with anything to even remotely touch the sun in artificial lighting, it's a little clearer regarding just how essential lighting is with the indoor grow. It's the MOST important equipment you will own and the determiner of what you get in the end. So take your time, do your research and get seriously well informed before you spend hundreds of dollars on something that you have no experience with. You pretty much get what you pay for in this biz...just like everything else in life. However, if you're not independently wealthy and don't have an unlimited budget, you'll have to put it together a piece at a time like most of here did. But if you really want to grow out some seriously nice plants and fat buds with real weight after cure, gotta have good lighting for each plant you flower. Best of luck and hope this rambling mess helps you out a little bit. TWW

 

By all means use cobs. I love mine. I was saying their lifespan and energy savings beat hps

 

11 mature under 800watts cxb3590, I'd say 6 or so would fit comfortably under 500 watt.

 

If you can build stuff, just build your own cob lights. You can do it all without soldering...imo the most work was drilling the holes in the aluminum angles for the frame, and that was easy too cuz aluminum is really soft. Just get the pre-drilled and tapped heatsinks, wago connectors, rivet gun.

Once you watch some growmau5 videos on youtube it all starts to make sense. It was way easier then I thought it would be.