Price was one thing, and spotlighting is another. Generally it's better to use more leds at a lower power than more leds at higher. It looks like the xpg's will put out about 2x the lumens, but I'm sure it will be less at 800ma. I bought my XR-E's for around 3$ each, and for that price, it wasn't hard. The first led that came up on a search was a XPG R5, which was around 10$.
Anyways, I've changed my design a little, and was wondering on input.
I've changed from the 15V 4A to the 24V 2.5A so I can more easily add some fans. I'll have two strings of 6 leds at .8A so I have around .9A that I can play around with. Since my tank is probably well to over lighted right now, I was wondering about the fans and possible moonlighting options.
If I put two fans in series and in parallel with the other two strings, will it screw them up? From class we learned series have the same amperage, and parallels have the same voltage. Each string will eat up 24V, so that won't be a problem, but will it screw with the other strings when it ramps up the speed? If that's a problem, couldn't I just fix the current draw of the fans somehow?
Also, rather than using a heat sink heat sink, it was suggested to me that I could just use an aluminum plate, and I was wondering what thickness I should get, or if I should just go with a traditional heatsink?