If the temperature of the heat-sink will be just worm, then the fans should be fine. That the high temp applications you should be worried about. Some lubricant on the bearings every 6 months should prevent a failure.
Finally going LED
- Thread starter Ace25
- Start date
Here is the top and bottom of the heatsink with fans and lexan shield installed and a row of LEDs with lenses to show some scale to the picture.
Finally got it done... that was A LOT of work. Quick opinion, not as much PAR as I was expecting, tops out at 615 at the same distance my 250w Radium gets 475. This is with all LEDs all the way up at 95%. It is better, but not as good as an XM 10k. Not sure if I care for the "shimmer effect" it gives off, like a MH shimmer on an acid trip. With so many points of light there are 48x more shimmer lines. Kinda spastic looking. What I love is the control. The ability to give me any lighting color I want is AWESOME! Something you have to see in person to really understand, but I think I can go from 5000k up to 25k just by adjusting the knobs. Eventually I will go a different route, use this driver box on something else and use PWM drivers that my Reef Angel will control, but I am still working on that part.
Driver "box" with dimmer control I made.
Driver "box" with dimmer control I made.
Looks like it came out nicely. Numbers as you've posted them are a bit underwhelming, but still not bad at all, everything considered (like electric bills). Now you just have to provide pics (maybe even a vid?) of your tank at those controllable color ranges you mentioned 
. Quite interested in seeing the controllability.
. Quite interested in seeing the controllability.
I need a waaaay better camera to show the colors. Here was my attempt with my crappy camera. It does not handle blues at all. At the end of the video is just Cool White + Royal Blue both up to 95%, all other colors off. I actually think it looks pretty good color wise with just those 2 types of LEDs. It is hard to do a gradual ramp up and down with all 4 knobs when I only have 60 seconds to make a video on my camera so please excuse the jumps in colors in a couple spots, I turned the knobs a little to quickly. I notice my camera doesn't pick up yellows to well either because at the end of the video the water looked like pee water in person but the video looks a little more white.
[YT]CM2Xc8FSb1w[/YT]
[YT]CM2Xc8FSb1w[/YT]
Here is a full picture with the LEDs hung above my QT tank. Everything is turned all the way up in this picture.
I am already going to do some changes.. all the "neutral/warm" whites that are around the outter parameter of the heatsink will be replaced with XP-G cool whites with 40degree optics on the edge. I am only going to keep 4 of the warm whites and replace 8 with cool whites. Reason being is because the Neutral/Warm white LEDs really suck bad when it comes to PAR. The Royal Blue/Cool Blues put out 2x as much PAR as the warm whites. I also think I have too much control in the warmer ranges that I really don't need. Sure, it is nice to say I can go 5k color, but the reality it I will never ever set the lights to that spectrum. I will still have a few warms in the mix, just not nearly as many as I do now.
