What to Do?

I been looking for ages now but ready to upgrade and keep changing my mind any help would be useful i got a 5x3x5 so not a lot of headroom i have been using a 400w hps and a 315w cmh which does serve me well. I was going to build my own led system but keep changing my mind so what to do

Diy strips
2x highlight boards
2x attis
any other options welcome i am in the UK i also dont mind using the 315w with a mix of led .
cheers

Check out led grow lights depot, they have a YouTube channel and do comprehensive video reviews of a lot of high quality led fixtures. You’ve probably heard of them. My personal recommendation would be to get a full spectrum white and red chip led whatever brand you decide on. My plants have responded more positively to said spec compared to blue and red. Hope this helps. Cheers

yeah cheers i was going to make strips but was a little unsure on what to use for the red chips

That’s awesome, I’ve been looking into building my own as well, and I’m currently planning to upgrade these lights by switching the chips to white from the existing blue and red. It’s great because I got 4 of them off eBay for 40$, apparently some unfortunate individuals grow op went bankrupt. DIY is definitely a good way to go.

how you planing on getting the reds in do you think am better going diy then ?
also i was reading that the strips can be closer to the plants

The existing chips are half blue and half red and ir. I want to replace the blue chips and some of the reds with Cree XPE2 white chips in 3000k and 6500k. If you’re thinking of doing diy just to save money, you definitely can, but probably not at first, at first it will cost more with tools, materials and the time you spend. I’d recommend buying a good light after researching and saving up a little $$. A lot of lights are expensive, but definitely worth the money because they last for a long time. You can find really nice lights on eBay used sometimes too. If you enjoy working with electronics definitely start looking into and creating a design or buy a light being sold for parts and build off of a existing design. You’ll realize there’s not much to it other than buying parts and putting it together.

am electrical engineer so and i pretty much have all the parts for heatsinks i might buy one light unsure which yet tho the highlight and the attis seem to be the two i keep going back to so might just buy one and stick the 315w cmh in there to and build a diy one for the next grow i got about £500 for a light am also going back to an diy undercurrent hydro system.

Oh hell yeah man it’d be relatively easy for you to build a awesome light in that case. Check out cutter electronics they have a really good selection of led stuff and a lot of diy oriented stuff too, it’d be perfect

didnt know they shipped to the UK nice one will have a look.

What sort of ratio would be best with the whites and reds?

so think have made my mind off keeping the 1x 315cmh in there and running leds instead of my 400w hps
so still need to pick a light or 2 to go with the cmh

build bridgelux or samsung strips to go round my cmh
1x or 2 highlight boards
1x 300w attis
or the hlg boards
i have around a £500 budget give or take any tried this combo as am thinking the cmh will give all the spectrum i need