DIY CXB3590 Do i have enough light to flower?

My first post, I've been lurking for about 3 weeks consuming all this excellent content you folks have created - so let me start off by saying THANK YOU! Especially SupraSPL, this is based off of his @56.1% efficiency posting

I've been talking with Jerry this week and I think I'm settled on running as follows
4x CXB3590 3500k 80CRI 36v
1x HLG-185H-C1400b
4x lenses from Jerry?

I would like to build 4 bars at 36" in length, however using the Supra reccomended 3.5"X36" heatsink I don't think the 100mm? Lenses will fit.

The space is 4x4ft, in a 4x8 tent.

My questions at this time are,
Will the lenses fit that heatsink without gaps on the sides?
If not, what's my best bang for the buck heatsink that will fit?

Are the lenses even needed? I'd love the protection they offer COBs, and I'd love to grow some monsters, but is it worth the added inefficiency?

Finally, I'd like to get my order placed with Jerry so it's on its way. Will this proposed setup be underwhelming, efficient, or overkill/wasteful? Unfortunately I'm still very new to this, my only point of reference is a mars2 1600 and I believe it's a terrible piece of junk and extremely underwhelming (I wish I could return it or find somebody to buy it)

Thank you guys for your assistance. As a bonus, here's the plants under their current light.
These are plants from a strain called "Elephant" that disappeared off the west coast in the late 1970s due to difficulties keeping colas from snapping stems outdoors. Seeds circa 1979 from the breeder of the strain/friend (deceased), this was every known seed in existence, minus about 40 he sold in 1979. He talked fondly of this strain, and always wanted to revive it. I attempted to germinate all 131 seeds and had 1 female and one clearly deformed plant sprout. The survivor is outdoors under care of a friend and these are her clones she's provided. I'm keeping 12, the rest are being distributed to local breeders so they have more genetics to work with. (I'm keeping 2 as moms, and if it's a promising strain will continue to share it)
Plants are 4 weeks old today from 1" cuttings. All have been topped once, and their lower leaves removed 2-5 nodes.
Unknown if indica or sativa or hybrid. I'm new to this, but from observations appears indica.

I'm not the best to answer this but I'll still give my opinion. Currently I run in a 4x4. I have a RW 150, xgs 190 and a 6 diode CXA @1.4A. Been passively kicking around the idea of replacing the A51 for another diy build. Though if I were redoing the entire thing I think I'd be fine with 12 cxb 3590 CD bin 36V@ 1.4A. Just given how I feel the cxa 3070s have performed for me. That being said I would think your plan would do an amazing job.

4 COB's per bar x 4 bars = roughly 780 watts ÷ 16 ft2 = 48.75 watts per ft2. I would say you would have plenty of light with that setup. Most guys are not using any optics on the COB's. I would just run without unless your set on using them. They will cause a small loss of lumens as the lights pass through as far as I know.

Thank you for your thoughts on this,
Not set on optics, I was worried about canopy penetration to some extent.

I've glanced over quite a few posts in non-led sections and other sites where I see people running in excess of 100w/sqft and had some reservations.

I'm going to go ahead and order everything but the lenses as described. Further comments would be appreciated, I can always ask Jerry to make a change to the order before it ships.

100w/sqft with LED would burn/bleach your plants guaranteed.

DocCox said:

Thank you for your thoughts on this,
Not set on optics, I was worried about canopy penetration to some extent.

I've glanced over quite a few posts in non-led sections and other sites where I see people running in excess of 100w/sqft and had some reservations.

I'm going to go ahead and order everything but the lenses as described. Further comments would be appreciated, I can always ask Jerry to make a change to the order before it ships.

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I'm not sure if lenses would give you better penetration. Actually opposite might be true as diffused light has the best penetration. On the other hand, some lenses might be beneficial as you don't use the whole area of the tent.

And 4 of these bars in 4x4...well lit at least, bordering with overkill maybe. You'd be reaching average PPFD of about 1300 µmol/s/m^2 which means that there are going to be hotspots with PPFD >> 1500 µmol/s/m^2 which is generally accepted as the maximum intensity the plants do well in. In short, prepare for some bleaching.

alesh said:

I'm not sure if lenses would give you better penetration. Actually opposite might be true as diffused light has the best penetration. On the other hand, some lenses might be beneficial as you don't use the whole area of the tent.

And 4 of these bars in 4x4...well lit at least, bordering with overkill maybe. You'd be reaching average PPFD of about 1300 µmol/s/m^2 which means that there are going to be hotspots with PPFD >> 1500 µmol/s/m^2 which is generally accepted as the maximum intensity the plants do well in. In short, prepare for some bleaching.

Click to expand...

Good thing is he plans on using a dimmable driver. I think it would be a good idea to dim them down and gain on efficiency at the same time.

CanadianONE said:

Good thing is he plans on using a dimmable driver. I think it would be a good idea to dim them down and gain on efficiency at the same time.

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It's always good to have dimmable driver. And plants adapt, one can train them to tolerate pretty high intensities.

Excellent, thank you all. The tent is actually 4x8ft, so I suppose I can widen the grow are if I notice bleaching (panda film divider in middle), or the pot/resistor route to dim. There's no scrog screen setup at this time so I'm Semper Gumby at this point with plenty to learn.

Thanks again to everyone that put in their input, my lights are in and running. I built a control panel outside the tent, I'm having some moderate heat off of the drivers but the heatsinks in tent are pretty close to room temperature. I need to find an ac-DC converter that can run 5 140mm fans eventually just for piece of mind (drivers really should have a fan)


That's a pic of the prototype panel, the actual thing is darn close to the same. Everything's 14ga, and it's all running off of one plug. About 800watts at full blast. Plants are in 4x4 area for now, and she's only running at 500watts until we get them light adjusted.

That looks good. im running at 50w/sqft and they look very healthy.

DocCox said:

Thanks again to everyone that put in their input, my lights are in and running. I built a control panel outside the tent, I'm having some moderate heat off of the drivers but the heatsinks in tent are pretty close to room temperature. I need to find an ac-DC converter that can run 5 140mm fans eventually just for piece of mind (drivers really should have a fan)
View attachment 3489887 View attachment 3489888

That's a pic of the prototype panel, the actual thing is darn close to the same. Everything's 14ga, and it's all running off of one plug. About 800watts at full blast. Plants are in 4x4 area for now, and she's only running at 500watts until we get them light adjusted.

Click to expand...

What is the model of that power meter your using? Where did you get it?

It's a no-name digital watts power meter. I went through about 15 models before I settled on this guy. With all this efficiency talk I thought everyone would be using them.

Search Amazon or eBay for PZEM-061 . This particular one is a bayite, but they are all the same. Some models are pretty amazing, but this is within about 1% accurate and extremely affordable (less than a killawatt meter). I tried some more expensive ones and they are NOT worthwhile. I would recommend this exact model if your looking for one. I've seen them between $8 and $30

All my spst switches disconnect their respective driver. You can then use these meters to dial in exactly how many watts you want your fixture to pull (pots are not a great way to dial things in). Just turn on a single driver at a time, dial it in, turn it off and repeat.
The listed amps/watts is what this meter actually uses... So basically nothing.

It also has a built in battery, so when my light circuit shuts down it remembers useage, and just keeps adding on.

Wiring is a joke. Run your ACL connections through its doughnut, and the device gets an acl and acn... That's it.

It's pretty useful... I have 3 more that monitor my other circuits (fans and misc junk) and I can calculate my costs to run any particular piece of my setup down to the penny in about 10 seconds

DocCox said:

It's a no-name digital watts power meter. I went through about 15 models before I settled on this guy. With all this efficiency talk I thought everyone would be using them.

Search Amazon or eBay for PZEM-061 . This particular one is a bayite, but they are all the same. Some models are pretty amazing, but this is within about 1% accurate and extremely affordable (less than a killawatt meter). I tried some more expensive ones and they are NOT worthwhile. I would recommend this exact model if your looking for one. I've seen them between $8 and $30

All my spst switches disconnect their respective driver. You can then use these meters to dial in exactly how many watts you want your fixture to pull (pots are not a great way to dial things in). Just turn on a single driver at a time, dial it in, turn it off and repeat.
The listed amps/watts is what this meter actually uses... So basically nothing.

It also has a built in battery, so when my light circuit shuts down it remembers useage, and just keeps adding on.

Wiring is a joke. Run your ACL connections through its doughnut, and the device gets an acl and acn... That's it.

It's pretty useful... I have 3 more that monitor my other circuits (fans and misc junk) and I can calculate my costs to run any particular piece of my setup down to the penny in about 10 seconds

Click to expand...

Thanks and yeah those no contact monitors make it super simple lol