HLG releases new quantum 120 board for DIY projects. $29

No sense in buying bulbs if you can wire one of these straight to a power supply.
Up to 60 watts. Samsung 561c leds It says needs no heat sink. 24 volt design. 2500mA max current per board according to link.

QB120 Quantum Board

 

Can someone link a perfect driver for a 2 board setup? I'm digging around. I'd like to find the 5.5mm dc connectors the board has as well.

 

One of these for each single board? Roughly $50 for single board light with driver and connectors. Can't beat that.
www.amazon.com/Meanwell-LPV-60-24-Sealed-0-2-50A-Supply/dp/B0180SRK/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1502041990&sr=1-5&keywords=24+volt+led+power+supply

 

I already ordered the stuff. It was $125 for everything shipped for two lights. They're 60 watts each. I currently veg a 4x4 area with 2 90 watt California Lightworks vegmaster 110's. Based on what I've seen in the performance of my QB260, the 60 watt 120 boards should replace my 90 watt veg led's no problem.

My build plan is to buy a cheap piece of sheetmetal and cut v reliefs in each corner about 3" deep then bend a reflector down 45 degrees on each edge. I'll mount the board to the center of the sheetmetal. I'm planning on putting a 12" piece of angle aluminum on top to mount the driver to and drill holes for light hangers. The additional metal acting as a heat sink for the board should allow me to run it at max output without issues.

 

If these light do better then my current veg setup I'll have to give twice as many plants away. This is 180 watts in a 4x4. I'm going for dropping it down to 120 with two of these boards. That is ridiculously low. 7.5 watts per square. I bet you it will grow the same jungle at that low level. It may even be better. Currently running 11.25watts per square foot. If I don't like it I'll put one of the CLW lights in the middle of the two others.

 

It would be the best side light you could get as long as you ran them at fairly low power. Maybe 30-50 watts. They get warm if you max them out. Most times side lights don't have a lot of light distance. If you run them higher power you'll probably need to have at least 8-10" light distance from them. They can be ran as low as 10 watts. At 10 watts I bet they could almost touch plants.

I'll tell you what everyone talks about how cool their LED's run. These quantum boards running at full tilt are not that cool running. My tent has went up a good 4-5 degrees and it's been a lot harder to maintain the temps since I replaced my platinum p450 with the QB260. They are similar watt ranges but the QB puts out twice the heat it feels like.

The thing is IMO you can't make massive amounts of light like that without some heat. They are not hard to manage though and those qb120 boards are a new lower voltage design. I suspect they will run way cooler then the QB304 boards that have over twice the led's and run over twice the voltage.

I still haven't seen mine show up in the mail yet. I have my fingers crossed that it may be today. I still haven't decided on how I want to build my fixtures. I actually contemplated mounting the drivers lower down towards the floor to keep the driver heat away from the boards and just run a longer 8ft-10ft wire off the driver. It should work fine and would make the fixtures super light. All they would be is the board, hangers, and some kind of reflector.

I've been thinking my ultimate setup for flower should include some far and near red plus UV. Kind makes some great supplemental light bars for flower rooms. They have them full spectrum and then also they have far red uv supplemental bars. The 3' ones which is what I would want are sold out.

If you're considering the side lighting for flower it may pay off to supplement with far reds and uv's in an attempt to raise potency. The 2ft bars are $115. Macro are the full spectrum and Micro are the UV/IR/red supplemental spectrums.
Kind LED Flower Bar Lights

You're running about 44 watts per square with that 1100 in a 5x5. Chances are with a single end fixture you probably have a lot of dropoff of light on the edges. It's very difficult for a single fixture to cover 5x5 unless it's an open bulb and then the intensity isn't as high when the spread is maximized.

If you added 4 of those QB120 boards, one in each corner with the HPS in the center, I bet it would make all the difference in the world. It would also step you up to a more respectable watts per square foot level. The standard minimum level for flowering with HPS is about 50 watts per square. Many people run way more then that. I have a friend who runs a 5x4.5' scrog out of a converted bathroom with 8 plants, 2 40 gallon DWC containers with 4 plants per container. He has ran 2 1000 watt hps vented hoods in there for a couple of years now. Recently he stepped it down to 2 600's and it's doing better I think but it never suffered really from too much light.

If you don't want to bother with the wait and the trouble to build your own fixtures I ran across this light when I was checking out growerslights.com the other day. It looked interesting. They're twice as expensive per watt as building your own 120 board fixture, but these things come ready to plug in/daisy chain. It's a single high powered citizen cob in it's own fixture. They run about 60 watts. Perfect for dark corners.
Johnson Grow Lights CX-1 LED Grow Light

They also come in a version with no lens if you want more light scatter.

 

I realized after looking around that one of the drivers that could potentially run these are the drivers that people buy for running led strip lighting in kitchens. Many of them have remote control or manual dimmers. That might be pretty cool to have. They aren't even that expensive.

I'm pretty sure this driver would work and give you dimming capability. Maybe one of the LED building guru's around would advise me if this would work since it's dimming voltage?

It's freaking $7 and will go up to 50 watts. If it burns out buy a new one. $29 for a board, $7 for a driver, $3 for some wire to make some hangers. You'd probably have a fixture that's capable of about what a 100 watt t5HO can put out for half the power.
www.amazon.com/Strip-Light-Dial-Dimmer-White/dp/B007RFMY1O/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1502828767&sr=8-5&keywords=24v+led+strip+driver

 

You know it's worth it. Just pull the trigger. $29. You could put a driver on it and sell it to any grower you know for $50 easy if you don't want it. I may be building a large scale veg setup with these if they don't disappear from the market for months at a time.

 

I think you're right. It doesn't make sense though because it also says 48 watt max. It could have to do with the voltage dimmer because when you reduce voltage current goes up. It may be 4 amp rated for when the voltage is turned down but that would be 4 amps at about 12 volts. In order for it to be 24 volts and 48 watts that would only be 2.0 amps.

That's why I wasn't sure it would work with the dimmer. I think you need a constant voltage and if you want to dim it should be adjusting current output instead of voltage. I could be wrong though I'm a rookie at building leds.

Voltage and current have an inverse relationship and when voltage goes down current goes up to match the wattage. It may work fine just only turned up all the time. Put a piece of tape on the voltage dimmer.

 

Here's a 50 watter that I'm pretty sure would work for $11. It also has a dimmer.
www.amazon.com/GALYGG-100V-220V-Universal-Regulated-Transformer/dp/B07216LT7P/ref=sr_1_1?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1502834495&sr=8-1&keywords=24v+50+watt+led+power+strip

 

I think it's that the max on the board is 2.5 amps @24 volts. If you run it at lower volts it may tolerate a higher current because in the end it would be a similar output.

Volts is water pressure, Amps is the amount of water if electricity were water running in a pipe.

If I think of it like that maybe you need a constant current driver set at 2000-2500ma? Then a voltage pot that starts at 24 and goes down from there. That would dim it without giving it too much current. That's probably how that 2A $11 driver I posted above works with it's voltage dimmer.