TropTrea
New member
That seems light considering many 2-3w fixtures have overheating issues with a finned aluminum heatsink and fans mounted directly over the fins blowing down.
I've noticed throughout the thread that many of the projects have passive heatsinks that are undersized. I'm not talking about the fan cooled heat pipe CPU coolers, but the simple aluminum fin heatsinks like you see on 3w builds.
Maybe I'm overkill, but I thought I would mention it.
Im running several tanks now with those 2 to 5 watt LED's and I'm using simple 1" X 2" channel allumnium without any forced air. I have no overheating issues at all. However I think the important thing is the spacing between the LED's. I space them at least 3 1/2" apart and even after 8 hours of operation the Alumnium is just warm to the touch near the LED's themselves. Another thng to consider is how the stars are mounted and that you have a good heat transfer between the LED and the Alumnium heat sink.
The next build I'm considering will be using the newer Cree 10 Watt LED's so I'm wondering if will be able to say the same thing about them. It is also rumored that soon there be 20 Watt LED's available from Cree. But the only draw back I'm finding on designing the unit with just 10 Watt LED's is there lack of available colors with the star mounts.