Another "perfect" NAS - ZimaCube Pro

[@moto_random_stuff]

I have a problem with Zima products, on the one hand they seem premium and on the other hand they suffer from the problems of being oddly designed. I agree with you Owl, that not everyone wants or can build something of their own, but for half the price of the 64GB version ($1,249) I built two NASes, one (main home server) on i7-11800H/64GB RAM/10GbE and the other (backup srv) on N5105/16GB RAM/10GbE each in the Modcase MASS Premium case. In my opinion, the price to performance ratio of zima stuff is poor. Anyway thank's for another interesting and great video.

[@dorkultra]

The fact that you have it setup with 2 display ports and 3 HDMIs is hilarious for a NAS

[@morsikpl]

Now only throw Grafana at this with 5 displays to show all performance stats of all the drives individually on each screen :D

[@GeekOfAllTrades]

"Some people don't want to build their own shit" lmao That earned a thumbs up from me 😅

[@NightHawkATL]

I am glad they are expanding and providing a good hardware solution that is compatible and competitive.

[@Nebulations]

About to install Windows XP on this one.

[@RaidOwl]

I dare you

[@JasonsLabVideos]

@@RaidOwl A bigger dare would have been to tell him to use Windows ME !!!

[@T3hderk87]

While drinking a zima no doubt, and listening to No Doubt....

[@bradford5833]

I'd recommend Windows XP x64 Edition for MS Flight Simulator 42069

[@jaygreentree4394]

@@JasonsLabVideos We dont talk about that OS

[@JasonsLabVideos]

Wicked video, I think one thing that wold be EPIC idea would be to have the power cord off board, that has one of the screw on barrels that can't come unplugged by accident..

[@PoeLemic]

Love your videos. Watching this, makes me want one of these ZimaCube's. That's a really, really awesome system. It's small and beautiful case. Glad you covered it, Raid Owl.

[@wojtek-33]

Im build it guy, but seriously would consider this. This has everything you need for a good homelab. Better than almost any other consumer nas solution. Can you passthrough individual nvme drives from that card?

[@gustersongusterson4120]

$1100 is way to expensive for a NAS with no drives.

[@RaidOwl]

If you just want a NAS then yeah

[@GsrItalia]

@@RaidOwl With that CPU and PCIe lanes available... Hardly can do more. I mean: works way better than any N305 SoC device, but it's 2-3 times the price. Delivering grunt for more or less 4 guests, but the CPU-hungry ones.

[@the_mad_swimbaiter455]

I'm on the fence. While I think 🤔 it offers a lot of performance, out fitting it on top of the cost hurts. I got a supermicro with 6x10GBe ports and 6 satas on the mobo. It's incredible for a home server and it cost me 200 bucks.

[@the_mad_swimbaiter455]

Maybe the power savings makes it worth it? Can you compare the power usage as compared to a Jonesboro DIY style system?

[@Rushil69420]

10Gbe, Thunderbolt4, PCIE expansion, and 4x NVME slots are all still kind of “premium” features for a NAS. You’d be hard pressed to build something similar without spending close to as much.

[@sabitech2k]

This device does NOT support SAS drives. Please do not buy expecting support for those drives. Just a word of caution :-)

[@FatherlyFox]

From what I can tell, the backplane they use for the device has the port that does SATA/SAS combo but ofc that doesn't guarantee support for the SAS protocol. So physically yes, but electrically no.

[@sabitech2k]

@@FatherlyFox correct, the backplane does have open slots similar to SAS, however I have 3 and work with IceWhale on the Prototype so can confirm. It doesn't have SAS support on bay 1-6. Those are Strictly SATA. Bay 7 is a U.2 connector and does not support SATA.

[@mikedoth]

They need to merge Casa and Zima OS's and get it over with.

[@Darkk6969]

Not bad design. Although speaking about the elephant in the room does it have rear fans for the hard drives? I can't tell from the video.

[@agistan7764]

kind of reminds of QNAP NAS - decent hardware and crappy software. The benefit here is you can un-shitty this and run your own software which makes 1k of it's price a bargain, considering size, thermals, and ease of install/upgrade of hardware.

[@cameronfrye5514]

Definitely would like to get your thoughts on it as a complete product. Having a decent CPU and expansion options (not to mention decent network ports included) would make it very desirable over something like a Synology, but DSM adds quite a lot of value to their product line. CasaOS is cool and easy to use, but just adding raid options to it doesn't really make it DSM, no matter how much it's name sounds like the '90s version of White Claw..

[@shawnlowe1392]

I don't know, I think it looks pretty slick! Now I gotta get my home lab up to specs to USE one lol

[@romayojr]

the zima reference took me back to my younger days 😂

[@ADAM_FOOOO]

Exactly what I thought when I saw that lol

[@morsikpl]

Hybrid 4x NVMe + 6x SATA? YES PLEASE!

[@sabitech2k]

@@morsikpl I actually mounted one of my ZimaCube motherboards in my 10 inch rack with a 3d printed part I designed :-)

[@Saschabrix]

Amazing. Need to save some money. Wish that Synology did something like this....

[@asm2750]

This machines case reminds me of a NeXT Cube.

[@ChrisGuerin-p8t]

What video cards can you add to the pro?

[@jothain]

Gotta love YT reviews. Earlier Zima products where good by virtually all,but now they've made something useful 😊 Note I'm not talking about this channel. Just overall

[@epochphilosophy]

Yeah, this thing is WAYYYY too expensive for what it does tbh.

[@PoeLemic]

agreed

[@domuk90]

I got the pro during the kickstarter and its a real shame as its some good hardware but you cant populate all the hdd bays with high capacity drives and use a GPU as the way they have chosen to power the NAS with a barrel plug, limiting power to the backplane and motherboard. Often come back to find its off or just not responding because the drives and GPU had to fight for power. Its way to early to sell this and should have another revision before they put it out for production after the kickstarter for it. I would wait for round two as the noise alone from the power pack and fans is not home lab friendly.

[@greenprotag]

I like your build. Now you can go sit at your friends house with a G-cloud or a Steam deck and any game you can't play you can just stream from the NAS. You can also remote in and manage a Co-Lo media server and/ or offsite back up. Not a bad little rig.

[@haplopeart]

ZimaOS is not fully baked for sure. I've already pointed out to them that selling a device that they label as a NAS that doesn't support creating volumes and presenting them to other machines on the network over iSCSI is a failing. I didn't even go down the FiberChannel road with them. I did basically tell someone there that my expectation would be that ZimaOS could do at least what a Synology or QNAP box could do. I've turned mine into a very good TrueNAS scale machine. I did consider Openmedia Vault, but I have more hours in on TrueNAS.

[@ChrisCebelenski]

That's... a lot of power draw - honestly 140W spikes is more than I expected - I wonder if your C states were set up properly in Proxmox? I get less than that level of draw from my Supermicro dual Xeon system, at least at idle. (Full-blast 72 cores not so much, or rather a lot more!) I have three lightly loaded Xeon-D systems right in front of me, and including the 10G network switch and a Terramaster F8 plus (also on proxmox ceph) on the same UPS, it's about 200-220W.

[@RaidOwl]

40 during single core load and 140 during full load isn't too bad imo

[@shephusted2714]

some improvements from zima - no labeling ports is inexcusable - they will fix that, ostensibly, 10% will build something better for about the same price

[@gandalfilgrigio97]

for 1k i think you can get a non mobile cpu, build a decent old system and get a used jbod for the storage. it looks good, but just as other off the shelf solutions, it's not really cheap (considering most of the people running this would just backup files and run plex)

[@michaeldullaway746]

A great video. Thanks for the review and it has 8 vertices too 😂

[@RaidOwl]

Excellent observation!

[@jodajackson4489]

We’re starting to see NAS manufacturers using similar specs (Intel i5 1235U) such as TerraMaster and UGreen. The pricing for such prebuilt hardware isn’t necessarily cheap. Fair market value? Probably more like what the market will bear.

[@bradford5833]

I am NOT a storage hoarder... I just want to have a backup of all human knowledge in case of zombies!

[@aarong2374]

Looks like they replaced the cpu cooler. Nice!

[@AlwaysBolttheBird]

This is a weird one for me. I like that they are branching off and making more completed consumer products. The problem is that I am a build it yourself guy so $1100 is insane for this price. I get that it’s more powerful than off the shelf NAS solutions but I think those are overpriced anyway. It has a lot of hardware for what it is I have to admit that. As a NAS it is 100% not worth it. As the main “hub” server in your house if you want off the shelf it is probably worth it

[@jeremybarber2837]

Man… very very interesting system.

[@guy_autordie]

I would prefer to have Gen4 1x on the 4 nvme and having the pcie x8 be a real x8. manufacturers needs to allow to downgrade the Gen speed for more lane on older AIC devices.

[@kurti8344]

How many times has your nose been broken?

[@RaidOwl]

0

[@tantgron4real]

I supported IceWhale/ZimaCube on Kickstarter, and will receive mine any day now. I'm already searching for a GPU for transcoding in Plex, and have my sight on an Intel arc A380 Low Profile (without 8-pin). BUT its difficult to find info on compatibility: Would be super if maybe you could make a video on different scenarios: Plex on native Linux (Debian?) Casaos, Proxmox; hard to get working or not. :) KUTGW!

[@MrPir84free]

Personally, I like it. I guess if I saved up over the course of a week or two... Hopefully they make it in a barebones version..

[@rhb.digital]

preeeetty sure nic on lfet is 10gbe as it has white LED no ?

[@josephkelly2015]

Zima beverage joke broke out genuine laughter as we're of similar age. Junior year high school memory triggered. Stuff was so nasty the 3 of us choked down one each and ended up dumping/throwing out the other 3 lest friends parents find it.

[@cbaservs]

its just one hell of a machine having unraid installed on it...maybe i just need a 10gb backbone network to have it working even better

[@hpsfresh]

Still no ecc. Still external psu. Just can’t understand why.

[@RaidOwl]

ECC would require more expensive parts and external psu to save space.

[@hpsfresh]

@@RaidOwl there is a lot of space in it. And yes, I am ready to pay more. Call it Pro if you want :))

[@TimHunold]

Looks like a 1970s airconditioner

[@chaosfenix]

I kinda wish people would stop running their own distro for storage. I think proxmox works great for virtualization and if I was wanting a nas I would just deploy truenas scale. It is all running on linux anyway why does everyone feel the need to skin it with their own interface? Edit. I will give HexOS a pass here because it simply is a new UI ontop of truenas scale. They work together on making truenas scale better. If Zima did something similar with an existing distro I wouldn't have a problem.

[@shib5267]

aren't all of those linux distros

[@chaosfenix]

@@shib5267 They are but they have gone further than simply running a new distro and their focus helps them. Again Proxmox specializes in virtualization and Truenas in storage. If ZimaOS wants to be valuable it should actually bring something new to the table. If it can't do that then you are better off going with one of the others where the support is going to be a lot better. HexOS does this by trying to simplify the NAS experience so that anyone can do it. Unraid also did this by trying to be easy to use but importantly by having a unique storage architecture that you could expand little by little. ZimaOS doesn't seem to try to do any of that and that is where it is having a problem for me. I see no reason to use it over any of the other ones I have mentioned.

[@AndreiAldea]

Licensing, if they ship with Proxmox or Truenas they'd need to pay the developers, so instead they spin their own and maybe add some of their own functionality. They also would need to pay Truenas for example for any kind of OS support they'd need for the HW, which they're unwilling to do since it would cut into revenue. I agree with your sentiment but at least you can run whatever OS you want so there's that.

[@tvojejbabkydedko]

why would i buy this for a price of hl15 which is already insanely overpriced?

[@RaidOwl]

Not every product is designed for you specifically…

[@PileOSchiit]

Where can you get an HL15 for $1100? I would pick one up fast at that price.

[@stargeezer8427]

I have more fun building my own stuff, and I'm pretty meh about Zima in general (especially that highschool parking lot bottled dog water lol), but I do kinda like this one..... No doubt the price is a bit steep but I'm so over the current meta; nearly everything else has a few core/tablet CPU, one RAM bank, and a pile of "options" with barely half the lanes you need to use any of it (And I don't care that they run on less than a lightbulb). Yep, this one's kinda cool.

[@rogerhalt3991]

1:39 awesome design in relation to what? Pcie adapters aren’t new 8:21 still have to fork out and fill it with something to hold the data first

[@RaidOwl]

Idk man it’s a cool design?

[@greenduckgamer]

Would I be able to install UNRAID os on this?

[@RaidOwl]

Yep

[@GrishTech]

8:11 😂

[@ovarb12]

dude it's $1100 empty. not sure who the hell would spend that kinda $

[@joshhardin666]

this is the same lack of pcie lanes that I have been complaining about with modern high end consumer cpus for a LOOONG while. - GIVE US MORE PCIE LANES ALREADY!! - PCIE x1 for nvme is BS. you take 7000mb/s capable nvme drives down to ~2000mb/s. the sata hot swap bays do look rather nice, and having 10g on board is excellent (and should be on EVERYTHING at this point.) and a 4x pcie slot isn't nearly enough for something like an ai gpu or gaming gpu... ugh.

[@RaidOwl]

I’d like to see Intel and AMD start giving us more lanes on consumer chips but that prob won’t ever happen

[@frankwong9486]

Blame Intel and AMD cut off pcie lanes amount 😂 I would like to suggest a build like AMD 7600, MSI X670E tomahawk, pcie bifurcation quad m2 carrier , and a 10 g network card This build you can have tons of highspeed m2 slot ,most of them connected to CPU directly, some connected to PCH and this thing is very upgradable , whole build price about 750-850GBP ,and few hundred hours on setup software and security .😅

[@wojtek-33]

You want enterprise lanes in a cheaper, consumer package. Not going to happen until maybe a future gen, but unlikely. The ROI doesn't make sense in the consumer market. Xeons, epycs and threadripper exist.

[@Marauder-q2v]

hopefully PCIE gen 5 will help alleviate this in the future. You can do 2x PCIE Gen 5 for an SSD instead of 4.

[@frankwong9486]

@@Marauder-q2v hmm, you will see reply similar as the one you replied to when gen5 is more popular Pcie X2 lanes for a nvme is bullshit etc , because people's wants were unlimited but the number of pcie lanes that can be provided was limited 🙈

[@Andy-fd5fg]

Nice case.... not so thrilled about the innards.

[@isyuricunha]

In my opinion, the price to performance ratio of Zima stuff is poor and no HDD for 1100$ or more. Not worth.

[@screamingiraffe]

there are much cheaper solutions and the savings can buy a lifetime worth of burritos

[@tracyrreed]

CasaOS, ZimaOS, it's all just customized Linux.

[@RaidOwl]

We're all just Linux if you go deep enough

[@Phil-D83]

Build your own box and run zima os

[@RaidOwl]

Ew no

[@Phil-D83]

@@RaidOwl or casa os on debian

[@enmanuelalvarezselman8781]

1000+ retail price... We can build a much better system with less.

[@RaidOwl]

Correct

[@RandomUserName92840]

$1000. ouch

Nah...if was cheaper maybe

[@kam2913]

rofl 8:15

[@Damien_from_Oz]

at 8:15 .... all the people complaining are nerds that want to build their own systems but you have to respect those that aren't able or have the time to tinker ..... I like to tinker :)

[@NatesRandomVideo]

lol. Meh. They’ll make something good someday. Maybe.