Here's my 2 cents worth. I needed to make the change to LED. I tried to years ago when the era of "blurples" was upon us. I spent a lot of green on some pretty lights. Buts that about it. Fast forward to about a year ago. I REALLY began researching LED's. Specifically one that could TRULY replace HPS lighting with LED's.
I remained skeptacle about them until I seen the first introduction into the Samsung LM-301's, and they were tied to an
HLG Quantum board.
From there I began to research. I mean really perform some due diligence. After spending countless hours scrubbing the internet, YouTube, blogs, ect. I was getting just a tad convinced there might actually be something to these LED's today. That prompted me to purchase a PAR meter. After playing around with it on my HPS lights, I took it to the hydro store that had the Quantum board and began to perform my own testing. For our small commercial grow, I needed to be around 800-1000 PAR across the canopy, and I needed 32 lights per room. I was blown away to find out this light utilizing the Samsung LM-301 chipset was truly a replacement for our tried and true HPS lighting. From there I put several emails to
HLG, but they were always on backorder and I needed more than one light. So I kept digging and soon enough I found an alternative to
HLG that had a telephone and actually answered it. After learning more about the company and the product I was sold. Not only did they use the same top shelf LM-301's but they improved the rest of the package as well.
For one, the
HLG is 4 LM-301 boards attached to a piece of 1/4" aluminum plate. The driver is attached to the center of that plate, between the 4 boards. I assure you, the driver is absorbing WAY more heat off the boards than it would ever put off on it's own. That's a sure-fire way to shorten the life of the driver, no doubt. At least putting standoffs between the plate and the driver would help dramatically. My last gripe with this otherwise outstanding board is after a good year of running a plastic clear film began separating on the board, though the light was still working.
Anyway, we needed a solution and
HLG was unable to deliver at the time, so my solution was to go with Atreum Lighting. For one, the LM-301's have proven themselves, time after time. Also, Atreum uses true heatsinks, one for each board. Better still is the frame they use to put 4 (or 5) of these boards together. It reminds me of an adult Erector set, and allows me to move the boards around on the frame for a perfect lighting footprint. They provide Meanwell drivers, and the 490's are all capable of overclocking to near 550 watts, giving in our growroom one board for each plant or about 137.5 watts per plant.
whichever direction you go, be sure you got the LM-301's and you wont go wrong. Heck, I hear Samsung already has an improvement OVER the LM-301's, so you might want to look into that!
We are just now firing up grow room number one. If all goes well, I have four more rooms, each requiring 32 1000 watt HPS LED replacements for flowering duties.
Good luck in your decision!