Help me choose lighting! 5x4 cab!

Just built me a 5x4x5 flower cab. It is dual active ventilated (4 ducts) 250cfm per 6" duct. One intake and exhaust may be reserved for an air cooled hood. I have 2 150watt hps kits and 20+ cfl's. I am considering scrapping everything and buying either 4 cxb cobbs, which are a bit exspensive OR a 400watt cmh but im not sure if it will be cool enough or big enough for 2 hybrids. I am using 30$ extra per month on 2 plants with just cfl's so i would really like to start getting some yields for the amount i spend on electricity. An 30 grams dry is not my thing for 300watts of cfl's.

For 14W/sqft PAR and a 49% efficient cxb build, you'd need ~571W dissipation total for a 5'x4' cab.

Check out supra's spreadsheets for the particular cob you're looking at to find how you can make a setup close to 50% efficiency, then see how many of those cobs you'd need and how much it would cost for 94% efficient drivers and heatsinks.. if that's within your budget, go for it.

Aim for between 12-14W/sqft PAR for that height.

1W dissipated * efficiency = watts PAR

https://www.rollitup.org/t/cob-efficiency-spreadsheets.865238/

churchhaze said:

For 14W/sqft PAR and a 49% efficient cxb build, you'd need ~571W dissipation total for a 5'x4' cab.

Check out supra's spreadsheets for the particular cob you're looking at to find how you can make a setup close to 50% efficiency, then see how many of those cobs you'd need and how much it would cost for 94% efficient drivers and heatsinks.. if that's within your budget, go for it.

Aim for between 12-14W/sqft PAR for that height.

1W dissipated * efficiency = watts PAR

https://www.rollitup.org/t/cob-efficiency-spreadsheets.865238/

Click to expand...

Thanks church. I the bullet and bought me a dimmable 1k HPS with an air cooled reflector. For 220$ locally, i couldnt refuse it. I have sketched up a few DIY led setups in my head, it will cost me around 550+ just to fill the cab with 5,000 lum per sqft. So this is what im going to do, going to save a little over 1000$, and build me a high powered led setup that will smoke the hps. Thanks for the advice. For the money spend on electricity i will eventually convert to cxa/cxb's.

That definitely works, and you're up and running as soon as it gets there!