I love LED builds. I have done a lot of them during a couple of years. Recently (the last 8 months or so) I started using LED multichips instead of the smaller 3W LED's. The reason for this was inspiration from Maxspect using them and also an online friend (Lasse, one of the best reefers in Sweden) bought a couple of multichips and was very successful with his builds.
So I did a conversion of my Giesemann pendant, taking away the MH's and putting a heatsink and some multichips into it. This build has given me 8 months of very nice light and consistent SPS growth.
My Elos 120 with DIY LED:
But recently I started thinking of converting the lighting on my 160 gallon cube. I wanted this build to have the smallest footprint possible and as much wattage / buck. So this is what I'm going to build.
2x200W (driven att 180W each) multichips with a combination of 20K and 453nm blue leds.
2x50W 10K multichips. These are going to run a couple of hours midday just to ensure the right spectrum for growth.
So four chips totaling about 460W but only during peak hours. Most of the day only 360W though. This is replacing MH's and T5's totaling about 700W.
To cool the chips I'm using GPU coolers for computers. Very cheap, very efficient. The ones I'm using are rated for 250W GPU's.
The cooler with all the mounting brackets removed:
The cooler with one chip mounted:
Still waiting for my drivers and 90 degree lenses, but I will share pictures when the lights are going through their "burn in".