New heat sink and holder for star LEDs

[gotfrogs]

I saw an advertisement in one of the electronic trade magazines for a new LED holder/heat sink. I ordered two of them from Mouser.com (PN 571-2008675-1) along with the optional thermal pad and light diffuser. I paired them up with 3W Cree LEDs from LEDsupply (PNs CREEXRE-W107 and CREEXRE-RB). The heat sinks are not cheap at $16, but I really like the look of the mount, the fact that no soldering is required and the LEDs can be swapped out very easily. I am thinking of building a panel of these to replace a 250 watt MH light on my 58 gallon tank.

[der_wille_zur_macht]

They do look cool, but:

Originally posted by gotfrogs
The heat sinks are not cheap at $16

Sweet holy mother!

For reference, a "typical" DIY LED build has a price breakdown as follows:

-$6/LED for the actual LED itself (Cree XR-E Q5, or Luxeon Rebel) mounted on a star
-$2.50/LED for buckpuck drivers ($15 per driver, 6 LEDs per driver)
-$.50/LED for DC power supply ($15 for a supply that can run 4 buckpucks w/6 LED ea.)
-$1.60/LED for a heatsink ($78 for a 3' x 8.5" heatsink from heatsinkusa that can hold 48 LEDs)

For a grand total of about $10.50 per LED. There are cheaper ways to build these things, too - my nano build is going to be more like $9 per LED. So that heatsink more than doubles the cost per LED for doing one of these builds! There are no thermal specs in the marketing material you linked to, I wonder how good they are at actually removing heat from the LED. How is the back of the star board actually connected to the base of the heatsink?

[gotfrogs]

Yep, not the cheapest option but they do have their benefits. The back of the LED connects to the heat sink with a small thermal pad. I did see a place on-line that sells them for $8 each in larger quantities.