meanwell driver is too damn hot

I know we've talked before about this. I just opened my tent and felt my drivers on my qb260's. I have two of them that have been on for hours with just a 6" fan blowing on them. They're hot but I can rest my hand on them barely. Probably 110-120 degrees.

I don't think they'll fail at those temps.

If you're really worried about them just wall mount the driver. It will significantly reduce the operating temps.

If they could have used a slightly larger driver they probably would have. They wanted to use an HLG series meanwell because those are approved for wet locations and are their highest quality drivers. They use the 240h-c1050a. Those are about $50-60 depending on where you get one and how many you buy. The step up from that model is the 320h-c1050a. That driver would be able to work at like 70% capacity so probably wouldn't be as hot. The problem is that driver is $99. They are trying to keep the cost of the fixture as low as possible. A driver that's twice the price can run that cost up. If meanwell made like a 285h model that was in the $70 range they may have went with that but that driver doesn't exist.

Using a driver that's about maxed out is just to save money and because that's how the model numbers of the meanwell HLG drivers line up. They're a bit of a issue with the qb132's. There's no perfect match for even running those boards in series at max.

 

Is your clip on fan really close to the fixture and blowing down the cooling fins? Mine have been running quite cool this winter. I couldn't get my room over 77 degrees with my exhaust fan on low.

I've warned people that these are not the coolest running leds because of the extreme output. I think you'd be pretty happy if you relocated the driver to the wall. All of my wall mount drivers barely run warm.

If all else fails they make the xl heatsink for the 260 that is 50% larger. It can't help but run cooler with one of those but it makes the fixture a foot longer.

 

BTW 81-82 would be my target temp. Over the last year I've had much better harvests at higher temps. There's quite a bit of articles out there talking about optimal grow temps with led being slightly higher then with HPS. The go to target temp of 77-78 is based on HPS growing. LED's don't impact surface leaf temps as much as HPS because of reduced infrared and yellow spectrums. This makes the optimal room temp for LED about 4-5 degrees higher.

 

I have a couple COB set ups and posted a while back how hot the drivers got. I finally checked it....150s F IIRC. I could grab them but had to let go after 5-7 seconds. I remotely mounted one of my drivers outside of my tent to help control grow conditions. It helped. If you want me to, I can fire mine up and let it run for several hours and chk the temp with my laser temp gun if you would like.

 

I checked my 288 with a laser gun, and at the face if the light it is 138D F..Not bad considering, and the driver is on top of the heatsink.

 

I run 304's I'm pretty sure they run a little hotter.

 

I'm pretty sure that the qb288's at 2100mA are running the leds at lower capacity then the 304's at 1050mA. They're built differently with a different number of parallel strings of leds in series. I think the current specs line up better to more closer max out each led. The 304's have a higher umol rating by .2

 

so 150 is in the realm of my memory being correct. Thanks man

 

I mount my drivers outside of the tents, my bud tent peaks at about 84 f ambient but leaf temps are never over 80 and usually around 78 at the top of the canopy. Haven't noticed any heat stress since I got the distance dialed in.

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I haven't had mine running as I am waiting on my Clones... I do have a couple autos and when I got my cob lights with a meanwell on each of the three lights in the mail I had it on for a tiny bit, it sure did warm thing's up for led...i have a hlg 300watt that isn't very hot tho

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