New Black Box led

Pntbll687 · May 8, 2020

Had this pop up while on amazon

800w seems pretty powerful

I like the feature that you can daisy chain up to 4 lights together and have a single plug going to the wall. For the price I might buy 3 and put em over my 180 just to try them out.

hmmmmm · May 8, 2020

I've build all sorts of LEDs and those are not 800w

also they are build to a price, so small cooling blocks with faster fans = more noise. The efficiency (par delivered for the power used) is not good, and the power supply\driver is the cheapest they could fine.

They will work fine however! I remember a big build on YouTube were a guy had these sorts of light running for years, with a very nice tank (he did replace the LEDs every year though

Actual usage = 120w
You can probably guess what the build quality is like when they overstate the power about 7 fold

Crustaceon · May 8, 2020

How again is it an 800w fixture when it only uses 120w? Oh.... China.

Pntbll687 · May 8, 2020

hmmmmm said:
I've build all sorts of LEDs and those are not 800w also they are build to a price, so small cooling blocks with faster fans = more noise. The efficiency (par delivered for the power used) is not good, and the power supply\driver is the cheapest they could fine.

They will work fine however! I remember a big build on YouTube were a guy had these sorts of light running for years, with a very nice tank (he did replace the LEDs every year though

Actual usage = 120w
You can probably guess what the build quality is like when they overstate the power about 7 fold

You know more about building led than I do so I'll ask.

Do they overstate the wattage by using a led capable of 3w but only use a driver pushing out 1w, or something similar?

hmmmmm · May 8, 2020

Pntbll687 said:
You know more about building led than I do so I'll ask.

Do they overstate the wattage by using a led capable of 3w but only use a driver pushing out 1w, or something similar?

On a lot of these fixtures yes, but it's not just the driver that's lacking, the cooling would never be able to keep up. The PCB lanes would simply melt ;Bored

The problem I would personally have with these lights is the reliability. The parts are crap basically, but they do work. Then they will fail and won't be available anymore, so you need to adapt and your corals will have to adapt as well. If you don't have the money for radeons of hydras (I know I'm not paying 1000+ per fixture) I would personally start with t5 rather than full led. If your good with electronics those LEDs might be fine, change a driver or a fan or whatever in the future and you can keep them going for a long time. In that case always have a spare on hand and dont run them at 100%, just my 2 cents.