Yeah that is what I thought. I was going to say that I would not touch it, but Enderman said it first.
Also, for testing even something like an SST90, Noctua’s cooler would be a bit overkill. For these big LEDS overdriven, it would leave a comfortable margin for pushing the emitters.
Finally, to drill them would be a bad thing as Texas Ace, as it would break the heatpipes.
However, as Barkuti said, mixing thermal paste with thermal silicone works very well as to fix a very high power LED to a suitable heatsink, if you have a ratio of 5-7% thermal glue, and 95% thermal paste.
I’m currently doing that with my XHP 50.2 in my Imgur link, and it works wonderfully, until the smaller heatsink can’t handle it passively at about 30W.
The large heatpipe copper bases are very useful though: very powerful multi-emitter constant brightness floodlights, or just a monster light, like the Storm of Ra.
But for testing, they are a bit problematic if you want to mount them using screws.
Only the large intel heatsinks (like BXTS13A) have the vapour chamber in the middle, the small stock ones don’t.
The thing is that the more power the LED uses the hotter it will get with that tiny heatsink, and as we all know, higher temp = lower output.
I can guarantee you that the small heatsink you used had the XHP70.2 at over 100C or possibly even 150C.
It was not 150c that is for sure after touching it during the test. I am guessing around 100c. Which seeing as the LED’s are binned at 105c, is still perfectly fine. Which is why I have not worried about upgrading.
Ok, I was thinking of another model, either way my goal is not to get max lumens on a bench, it is to get realistic real world lumens so people can know what to expect in a light.
Nice work Ace. I really love the way your graph looks. What program did you use to make that? Also have you done a control test like this with XHP35HI?
Don’t worry, none taken at all my friend… Were all in this together!
Yes, I have a few dozen LED tests now, you can see them in my sig. A member here made a graph that can compare them if you click the link to see all the tests.
You don’t need all that. I brazed one together from copper using an oxy-acetylene torch 17 or 18 years ago, back before you could buy them. Heck, for the last 15 years now you could just buy a copper water block. Get a bucket of water, put a little antifreeze in it to block algae growth, drop in a submersible pump and away you go. Keep the flow rate high and it will take a very long time before the reservoir starts to warm up. Almost completely silent as well.