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Quantum Tower LED PC case: 46w of SDOG

T

trem0lo

After a few months I *finally* have a plant in flower. I had to scrap the original grow as I was just out of town too much to care for them properly.

I have just one female I managed to keep alive while I was away. She's about a week into 12/12. I'm heading off a small N deficiency but she's doing great now. The SCROG is 2 cooling racks from the dollar store cut to size and ziptied together, held up with magnets. Most of the leaves are under the screen but the budsites are stretching up nicely. She's over a foot tall but you wouldn't know it :cool:

Due to my nonstop tinkering, I shorted out the fan controller (oops!) but it's still in there for cosmetics. I also replaced the PSU with a much better solution. It's a 12V 4amp unit that plugs into the wall with molex connectors on the other end. It's attached underneath the PC case and feeds in through a PCI passthrough slot. That's connected to an internal fan header with 5 connections for internal fans. The rear passthrough card also has 3 fan headers for my outside fans. I have a bunch of fan adapters with various resistors so I can still control fan speeds if need be.

I also installed a USB passthrough card for my camera or any USB devices I might need in the future.

Oh yeah, I moved the LED power supplies to the back, and covered them with a PSU shroud. A small 80mm fan keeps them nice and cool. I also turned the direction of my filter to better exhaust the warm air.

 
Wow man! That is the most badass PC case I have ever seen. Hopefully this round is a little more successful!

How many watts are the diodes that you are using in that LED?
 

rives

Inveterate Tinkerer
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Very sweet setup, Trem0lo! I'm not sure how I missed it up to this point, but it looks very nice.
 
T

trem0lo

Thanks guys!

Higher, the red LEDs run about 1.6w and the blue/white LEDs are 2.4w. The whole light is 46w on two separate arrays.

rives, your DIY light puts my ghetto setup to shame. That thing is seriously awesome!

In a perfect world I'd have the heatsink mounted on top of the case instead of the heat dissipating inside. Maybe if I painted it black :D Just a few inches below the lights it runs 10 degrees above ambient, 5 with just one array on. So I can live with that.
 
T

trem0lo

It's a man, baby!

Looks like my girl turned out to be a guy. The preflowers must have fooled me early on, and I didn't ever check them again. Oops! I have 4 more SDOG F2 seeds down and soil mixed and ready to go. Hopefully in a couple weeks I'll have a girl (or two) ready to flower. Stick around!
 
J

JH151399-OG

Trem0lo, way cool man. Sorry to hear about the dude getting in there, but it'll be better next go around! Would you please check out my thread here and give me some advice? I am building my own LED PC case and am having a difficult time homing in on the right ma's to run my LEDs at and where to find the right driver. Thanks much, man!
 
T

trem0lo

Hi everyone!

We're back with three F2 SDOGs going strong in 1 gallon geopots. I was sick of watering issues so I stuck my blumat jrs back in with a 32 oz reservoir. Now they remain in the "reaching" position all the time, instead of immediately after watering (or over-watering, in my case). Just need to top off the reservoir every few days. This is better anyway as geopots tend to drain everywhere with conventional watering.

The SDOG has three or four phenos: Skunky/fuel, coffee/incense, lemon candy and sour diesel. The biggest of my three is lemon candy (grew out a similar pheno last time), the middle is fuel/skunk, and the left one is sweet incense-like but doesn't smell much yet. Unfortunately the SD pheno seems to be the most rare. But JLP used a SD IBL in the cross so we'll wait and see.

I've only got one array turned on right now, but as you can see it's plenty bright.

 
T

trem0lo

Growbox, JH, GoodStuff... thanks for coming by! Hope you find all the detail helpful and not overwhelming!

So I've been having trouble with my carbon filter. The last few days I was catching whiffs (eau de cannabis, if you will) of my growbox while sitting at my desk. Weird, as the coconut carbon I put in seemed to be working fine before. To be sure, I sealed any questionable leakage areas with black silicon caulk. But when I stuck my nose to the exhaust, I could still detect a faint odor.

I removed the filter to change the carbon out and noticed that there were pieces sticking to the magnets that hold the filter in place! Upon closer inspection, I could see that some of the carbon bits were actually very metallic! Now you wouldn't notice this normally, but when pieces stick to magnets, you have to wonder...

Whether it's quality control issues or type of carbon (it's from ebay, go figure) when I added good old aquarium carbon back in, not only did the smell disappear but my temps dropped a degree or two from better airflow. We'll see if she holds up to the ultra-stink SDOG puts out late in flowering :dance013:

They have really taken off in the last few days. The one on the right is fat and vigorous, probably from having his own pot :D No preflowers yet... hopefully we can see some in the next few weeks and get on with it!

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GrowBox420

Member
Your thread got me thinking why my carbon scrubber isn't doing the trick anymore... and it has to be that the carbon is old and its not doing its job any more .....
Thanks for posting your experience!
 
T

trem0lo

Growbox, looks like your scrubber is a pretty solid design so it's probably just old carbon. With a 2" carbon layer I'm sure it works really well. Mine's about 1" so let's hope it remains effective. It holds about 10 oz of carbon so I'm probably going to change it twice per grow just to be safe.

The kids have been eating their Wheaties, that's for sure. The fan leaves on the indica dominant one are absolutely huge. I mean, I feel like it's just showing off at this point.

I keep checking for preflowers but nothing yet!

With one lamp on. This one has two blue lights, hence the hue.

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With both lamps on. The second lamp has an extra red instead of a blue.

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What, is that a computer under your desk? If by computer you mean high powered LEDs hooked to constant current drivers and an odorless ventilation system, then yes.

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T

trem0lo

Time to get them going into 12/12 soon I think, regardless of preflower status. They grow quite generously under this light and I don't want them to get unruly. The question is whether to transplant the female(s) into a 2-gallon geopot (barely fits in there) and give up some height.

Just gave them a molasses bath. The two phenos on the left are turning out to be almost identical. Skinny, kinda lanky with that acrid diesel skunky smell--very pretty. The other one is a thick-stalked bushy indica that is much more lemony in odor.

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T

trem0lo

Hey all, the two lanky phenos started to show; one male and one female. Still too early to be sure on all three so they get to stay.

So they gobbled up all the food in the soil so fast I missed some deficiencies showing up... they suffered a bit when I wasnt looking... sigh. With small pots and organics I'm finding the food supply is exhausted in a matter of weeks. Never had this problem vegging under CFLs! I just transplanted to new soil-hopefully they perk back up!

The challenge, then, in flower will be to keep the nute supply constant without overwatering (which is easy to with the blumats if you water normally-you can see that I did a bit in the last photo). I think I'll try top dressing along with fish/seaweed fert in tiny amounts of water if needed.

I'll get this dialed in yet! :D
 
T

trem0lo

So today starts flowering day #1. I can't really afford to wait much longer for them to show sex, or to adapt to their new containers. So off they go into 12/12...

I had guests over the whole weekend so I lost a few lower leaves due to the deficiency which was a mix of Potassium and Nitrogen... sucks when your plants are *right there* and you can't check on them... a couple days is all it takes! :(
 
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