Best Practice?

D

drakky

Senior elf
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
Messages
518
probably a dumb question but just wanted to check if this is an acceptable way to do things or not
I've calculated all my power draws at 100% one box would be drawing just over 52 amps @ 12v, so I was going to use 2 power supplies (all mine are the 600 watt meanwell labelled ones Ray supplies) which is be plenty with heaps of headroom , however after testing lights I've decided that they don't need to be run at 100% brightness and have used the diming curves to set them at 70% upon recalculating the currents it's now 36 amps which is under the 80% recommended rating of one power supply, my question is , is this bad practice to rely on the dimming curve values when working out the power supplies required ? would it be better a better practice to use the original design of 2 power supplies in the box than 1? I'd rather do it properly the 1st time than have to change it later

the reason I'm wanting to use 1 is I can get away with a smaller box obviously though if it's not the better way 2 go I have a larger box available , also the reason I'm using all 600w supplies is I'm wanting as much as possible to be interchangeable but they are quite larger than the 350w ones most are using
 
You should be fine as in practice you're never likely to be running all the pixels at 100% and even if you were it's likely to be seconds at a time rather than for any significant duration. On top of that the theoretical current is more often than not never reached as in practice the voltage drop in cables means that at least some of the pixels aren't in the constant current voltage range and won't be drawing 55mA.
With your dimming set to 80% you should be well and truly safe.
Make sure you have ventilation (preferably fan forced) and you should be good to go.
 
Like Alan said, it is very rare that you will reach maximum, and if you did, you would most likely find the white would not be white.
 
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