So I know I’m going to get some grief from people, first i know they are all coming from china but what about alibaba they have a hlg 550 for like half the price have you ever looked around there to spot the differences between the products?
Well it’s not an hlg-550, as the hlg stands for horticulture lighting group which is the name of the company that makes it. But yes, I have seen them. Some of the knock offs are pretty good, and some of them lie about actual leds used.
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So typical stuff alright ty sir. Have your self a good day 
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Exactly. I feel pretty confident that they will all grow weed. But with any significant difference in prices you’re pretty giving up something. Could be something like quality of components, or maybe quality of assembly. A lot of people don’t understand the binning process either. There’s less demand for lower performing flux bins, so they are a lot easier and cheaper for manufacturers to get.
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Yeah it seems like that they are just using less than grade A diodes and parts and the shipping is ridiculous so in the end you are getting a inferior product for right around same price maybe save $50-100 so I’m the end probably not worth it.
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Shipping is another thing. The company’s here already ate the cost of having boards or components shipped here too.
So 2 of the 288 boards can flower a 2x4 tent what if I went with 3 and did a triangle style frame?
The light that misses the canopy and bounces off the wall back to the plant is subject to the inverse square law. You want your lights covering the canopy perfectly, and if light spills onto the walls, you want the walls close to your plants.
Once you understand the inverse square law, evaluating light arrangements becomes easier.
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In this instance, if your light arrays are rectangular, a rectangular canopy is probably optional, and ideally you’d fill out your tent in a scrog or sea of green.
I have a 2x4x6.5 and put an HLG 320xl in it, a tad bit overkill but love it really fills the whole tent and have had some amazing results since I switched away from my Alibaba COB’s
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That being said our lighting guru said I would do fine with a 280xl I just went for the bit of extra oomph
You could go with 3 boards, but I wouldn’t arrange them as a triangle. Either use 3 board heatsink from hlg (320 xl kit) or buy 3 single board heatsinks and you could do same thing or rotate the boards 90 degrees and still have them all in a line.
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I wrote optimal, not optional. I blame autocorrect, also known as “Uh, Doh, Incorrect!”
@dbrn32 so i was just looking at the 4x qb288 rspec and I noticed it says no dimmer how would I go about adding one?
@dbrn32 i was looking at the 600w.
Gotcha, hlg-600 kit. They are not approved vendor to link here.
I believe if you scroll on that link, hlg recommends a 50k ohm potentiometer to dim that driver. But you should double check with them.
Oh my bad. Guess as much as dveryone uses them on here they would of been
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No biggie. Just letting you know why I removed it.
@dbrn32, I am going to be switching to LED in the very near future. What lighting, form HLG, will it take for a 5x5, I have been meaning to ask, just want to know how much $$$$ I need to save before starting to look for lights. I am running a 1,000 watt MH/HPS air cooled set up at the moment and am looking to upgrade to LED in the near future. Thanks and have a great evening 
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