frozengreen911
New member
I'm thinking of sticking a 70watt HPS in a computer case. i was wondering how hot do these things run? Will two 120mm fans one for intake and one for exhaust be able to keep the temps down?
70watt hps heat
- Thread starter frozengreen911
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G
Guest
Those little things get HOT. And the ballast gets HOT. It's seemingly impossible to get the bulb close enough to the plants to get good bud density without getting too close ad having larfy buds and /or heat damage. I know that balance must be found with any light system, but having used everything from fluoros to 1K HPS, the 70w HPS in particular seems the hardest to work with.
My suggestion is rather than get a 70w HPS, get two 42w CFL's. Way less heat, you don't have to diddle with a ballast and you can get the bulbs down into the plants without fear of burning them. Also the light will be more evenly distributed over a larger area.
I really think that anything less than 250w is better done with CFL's rather than HPS.
My suggestion is rather than get a 70w HPS, get two 42w CFL's. Way less heat, you don't have to diddle with a ballast and you can get the bulbs down into the plants without fear of burning them. Also the light will be more evenly distributed over a larger area.
I really think that anything less than 250w is better done with CFL's rather than HPS.
^^ correct. u need them close, but they get hot and the heat stunts them abit. 2 in a pc case isnt a wise idea. but if you had them in cool tubes, then its possible.
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UBER21
Keep an eye out for my pc mini 70w grow......imho the cfls will not give the the same yield as an hps period no matter what..... to many cfls need to be placed to equal what 1 hps will do as far as lumens and dont let anyone fool you those cfls get just as hot as a small hps...only difference is the extra heat giving off the ballast which if you wire remotely it can be placed outside the case ........my temps are staying 77-79 at most with the light hanging vertically over the seedling with no problems.....I will eventually place the light horizantally but for now she is vertically......as for the fans I have 2 intake fans and 1 exhaust that are working just fine......do a search on micro grows and u will see other pc grows using small hps's...peace
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UBER21
jrw said:
Thats interesting that you said that but I have seen a few grows that were using 2 42 w cfls and another using 70 hps grow and the quality as far as yield and bud density was better from the hps.....not knocking cfls either as they do produce......im just saying that u need a bunch of cfls to make it worthwhile and anyone who says cfls dont get hot is talking pure crap.....they get hot and can burn just as fast as an hps...which I have witnessed from a small cfl grow I did a while back......
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UBER21
Here is a link of a very nice pc stealth 70w hps grow 2 plants......
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=67400
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=67400
UBER21 said:Thats interesting that you said that but I have seen a few grows that were using 2 42 w cfls and another using 70 hps grow and the quality as far as yield and bud density was better from the hps.....not knocking cfls either as they do produce......im just saying that u need a bunch of cfls to make it worthwhile and anyone who says cfls dont get hot is talking pure crap.....they get hot and can burn just as fast as an hps...which I have witnessed from a small cfl grow I did a while back......
i agree that you can get more yeild from a 70hps than even upto 100w or more of floro.
but cfls do not get anywhere near as hot, nowhere near, not even close. my cab is far far cooler, by nearly 10c when i used cfls, even with more than double the wattage..
Sun.is.Shining said:
You might be right about the 70 watt HPS, but there's plenty of people doing alright grows with 150 watt HPS. Check out the 150 watt HPS forum if you doubt !
A 42 watt CFL has around 2800 lumens. Even if you had 4 of those, which would make 168 watts of CFL power, you'd get far less lumens and less penetration power than you would from a 150 watt HPS, which is around 16,000 lumens. And I'm not knocking CFL's, because I use them myself also, especially for veg.
bozga
Member
I'm using 70watt HPS and it's not so hot. I mean, it does produce heat way more than CFL but you can bring temps down with two computer fans no problem. My temps are around 23c at the bottom of the plant and around 28-29 C on the top.
With CFLs I didn't have any temp issues, but plants grow faster and better with additional HPS light.
CFLs make healthier plants and are quite good, but HPS is more agressive type of light and plants respond to that. So I have 70watt HPS + 115watt CFL. That works nice. =)
You can see my grow herehttp://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=80062
With CFLs I didn't have any temp issues, but plants grow faster and better with additional HPS light.
CFLs make healthier plants and are quite good, but HPS is more agressive type of light and plants respond to that. So I have 70watt HPS + 115watt CFL. That works nice. =)
You can see my grow herehttp://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=80062
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UBER21
smokeymacpot said:
Smokey ur are deff right they dont get as hot.......but they do get hot and can burn plants just as an hps does......I did a cfl grow from start to finish a few years ago and I had about 12 cfls running in a cab....and I didnt like how the end result came out......the buds were very airy and fluffy........when I made the switch to an 150 hps the buds were tight full of crystals and yield was far better than with using my cfls......plus having to adjust the cfls on a daily basis was a real pain in the ass.......for vegging there great but for an entire grow.....not my cup of tea anymore........i see it as a cheap alternative to hps.......even if ur on a budget hps security light's are like 50 bucks....if u cant afford that than seriously u should not be growing.......lol....
250wscrogger
Active member
Flowering with cfl's is a pretty big waste of electricity no matter how small your growspace. Cfl's are great for clones/moms/early veg but in my opinion just don't have adequate penetration or lumen output for flowering. It takes 5 42w (210w) cfl's to match the lumen output of a 150w hps. Sure hps lights do put off more heat but it's worth it for the gain in lumens per watt if you can cool it properly. I'm not saying you cant get nice buds with cfl's but I've never seen anyone pull anything in the ballpark of a gram per watt with cfls 
The only good way to flower with cfl's is dr greengenes perpetual sog.
The only good way to flower with cfl's is dr greengenes perpetual sog.UBER21 said:
dunno what u were doing then, but ive use both at the same time and the cfl's made the densest bud, id probably say more frosty too. the only time i got a burn was when a leaf touched the bulb. yet you can get burn from a hps when like 5" away.
yeh obviously a 150w hps is gonna be far better, but i and no other grower on here wud say cfl produces bad bud. less yes, but not bad..
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UBER21
Im not saying smokey that it produces bad bud im just saying that u need a bunch of them to get something decent.......when with a hps all u need is one light and thats all.....and even better if you have a cool tube the light can lay right on top of the plants withought burning them......Are u saying that a cfl can give you denser buds and more resin than if someone was using a 150 metal halide???
I use a 70watt HPS in my micro as well. I must say that while the bulb doesn't get too hot(homemade cool tube) the ballast gets HOT!!! I also found that the HPS grew plants fast, but plants would stretch just to get enough light, causing airy buds and small undergrowth. And compared to my 55 watt CFL that sits next to it, without any sort of fan blowing across it, the CFL always cooler than near the ballast. This could be because my unit is old and decrepit, but I, just last night switched in a 23 watt 6500k CFL in place of the HPS as my mother plant died(I don't know why, it just lost leaves and keeled over:.(...) So I figured that the spectrum would be best as I have 3 rooting(ed???) clones, one clone that is soon to be the replacement mother, and 3 Hashberry seedlings. So I will have to see how the heat is in comparison(I still have yet to.)
UBER21 said:
you will get nice bud from a MH, it will be dense like cfl bud. its to do with the light spectrum. more resin was probably to do with there being less heat around the bud.
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UBER21
I have heard that cooler temps...put the plants in a protective mode which in turn puts them to produce more resin as a protective layer on the leaves....Sort of raising its defense...
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Guest
greenhead said:You might be right about the 70 watt HPS, but there's plenty of people doing alright grows with 150 watt HPS. Check out the 150 watt HPS forum if you doubt !
A 42 watt CFL has around 2800 lumens. Even if you had 4 of those, which would make 168 watts of CFL power, you'd get far less lumens and less penetration power than you would from a 150 watt HPS, which is around 16,000 lumens. And I'm not knocking CFL's, because I use them myself also, especially for veg.
No doubt, but if you can get similar results from a CFL setup without having to: have a cool tube, a higher-powered (i.e., louder) fan, a ballast that will either take up grow room space and add a lot of heat or have to be mounted remotely, having somewhere to adequately exhaust all said excess heat.
Just sayin', if your starting from scratch and you're not going at least 400w, you may as well just go CFL. There's lots of growers getting CFL harvest that would match a lumen for lumen HPS grow.
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Guest
And FWIW, I have a 70w HPS SCROG cab I built a few years back.....I'll be replacing the 70w with CFL's (probably 2x42w) and will have much less overall heat to exhaust, more even light coverage, and I can get the light much closer to the plants. Even a well cooled 70 needs to be a couple inches off, or more, and you've already lost most of your penetrating intensity at that point....
...anyway, I'm expecting better results and performance with the CFL's
...anyway, I'm expecting better results and performance with the CFL's
