Noob help with d.i.y led!

[seedlingstarter]

Hi, all I recently just got some 3w red leds and blues i bought 10 of each off ebay. I calculated the math by the watts of the led, which i found out is wrong so i did 16x3 getting me 48watts right, so i thought. So i buy a 50 watt driver to power this. Then someone tells me that the driver is a overkill an will blow my leds. The light is going into a pc case. so i was wondering how else can i power these. I have seen cpus power them but for a high wattage of leds. I'm looking to use the 10 red and about 4 blue anything else i can use or am i stuck with buying another driver?

 

[seedlingstarter]

Come on surely somebody knows something that can power the lights

 

[SupraSPL]

Yes, very unfortunately LEDs are often sold by wattage, which is a ridiculous way of saying how hard the LED can be driven. "1W" leds are normally driven at 350mA and "3w" leds are normally driven at 700mA.

Is it a constant current driver? If so, there should be no problem driving 16 leds with a 50 watt driver. The 50w figure is just a maximum.

 

[hempfield]

Power is just a generic name that designates a certain type/group of LEDs. The main aspect you should know when you start to design a led fixture is the working current of those leds.
The "3W" leds will never burn 3W of power on regular usage, but they can be pushed further on peaks for very short period of time.

Also, when a driver is rated to a specific power, that means that the driver will assure the regulated current so long the total power consumption does not exceed the designed value.

When you start to design a led fixture, calculate the leds number (N), the total voltage drop over the entire chain and choose a driver that can power N+2~N+3 leds, but keep in mind that a oversized driver will have a lower efficiency (because the excess voltage must be dissipated somehow inside the driver).