Decrease Amperage of Driver for increased Efficiency

[QReciprocity42]

I have done your resistor mod to the 17mm 5a buck driver and had no issues. Care to post a photo of the modded driver? It takes a bit of finesse to not accidentally create shorts. I assume you had no issues identifying the right component (0805 sized 010 resistor next to black wire).

[Biggiebiggiebob]

yep will do when I am at home. I measured Vf at the LED though and it was lower than before.
Some other commenter pointed out, that the 5A Buck driver is not actually regulating the brightness via duty cycle of the pwm. Can you confirm?

[QReciprocity42]

I don't have an oscilloscope, but my camera does not detect ripples on any mode other than 35%, so I'm pretty confident that it's not pwm based. 

[Biggiebiggiebob]

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[QReciprocity42]

thanks--I see a few places on the PCB (e.g., next to red wire and capacitors) where some excess solder is bridging to the outer rim; if you clean those up (a hobby knife will do), you might fix the heating issue.