Zimablade 1 Board NAS - Should You Buy?

[@landtimforgot]

It is an interesting product. PCI Express 2.0 (×4 link) theoretically has 2 GB/s bandwidth. That's plenty for spinning rust array. Attach older PCIe RAID card flashed to IT mode or budget HBA network? Network in going to be a bottleneck even if CPU isn't. The eMMC storage is a problem. Especially for some OSes. I'd suggest that boot/OS HDD or SLC SSD drive via USB might be a better option.

[@HelloHelloXD]

5:08 what power supply would you add to power more HDDs?

[@aarontheblackfox]

I recently bought a cooler master cosmos II. Plan on putting a decent primary build in there with a nas, and then use proxmox to add these as a HA cluster all in one chassis.

[@GerhardAEUhlhorn]

You have made video on DIY NAS. Can you also build a DIY Thunderbolt DAS?

[@hakdaman]

Good review

[@nascompares]

Cheers mate

[@EuroPC4711]

Great, informative video as allways, thanks a lot. Would you deploy Plex on a Diskstation (mine is a 918+ and a 1621+) or rather on a zima blade/ board? I recently got my ZimaBoard and I am quite happy with it. Only thing is, that I like the look of the Blade more than the board ;) And I agree: I’d prefer the blade over the Raspi.

[@tcdcomp]

You said at 10:28 that it is a 64 bit x86 Celeron. x86 is 32 bit. But still Thank you for all the good info.

[@jimcallahan448]

This is a good device for prototyping a device based on an X86 Docker container that is a minimal viable product (MVP). The Zima Board and the Zima Blade are small enough to be packed with a laptop and taken to a prospective customer (try doing that with a prosumer 4 bay). If your prospective customer says, "I like what it does, but its too darn slow" then when you ask them how much more they would be willing to pay for more speed you have a paying customer and a budget to find a more suitable NAS/Docker server in the prosumer or rackmount tier. With the coming of the Zima Cube one might even be able to stick with CasaOS and the Zima brand. But there are price sensitive customers and at the opposite extreme there are regulated electric utility monopolies and the military that will pay top dollar premiums for reliability. Beyond that there are the spy and nuke agencies that will pay top dollar for maximum performance super computers. The consumer equivalent of that would be hard core computer gamers.

[@GerhardAEUhlhorn]

Is it possible to connect more than one PCI cards simultaneously?

[@yevhenbryukhov]

Does ZimaBoard is cooler than the ZimaBlade and handles the heat better?

[@drewbenedict2246]

I purchased the Zima Board instead of the blade this week. Same gen 2 pcie and the temperature complaints kept me away from this one. Although that usb 3.2 gen 1 looks nice

[@nascompares]

I gotta admit...2 weeks on, and I miss that bloody big heatsink on the Zimaboard......sigh

[@ACuteAura]

i tried casaos and... everything runs as root? the files are all owned by root? no authentication on samba by default? and that's when i terminated the VM and forgot about it.

[@wcg66]

Not much different than unraid

[@iblackfeathers]

i think it’s pronounced zee-mah because zima means winter in certain slavic languages, which means “winterboard”. kinda cyberpunk there.

[@r0galik]

It's not "zee" but a merging of z and i sounds, "ź". At least in Polish. It is very sad that western reviewers don't even care to look up whether the name means anything if it's not English. They miss nice things, for example that "velka" means "enormous" and it's a name for a little case...

[@davidg5898]

For the most part, I like the Zimablade. But it uses noncompliant USB-C power and that's a deal killer for me. It has a 12V only power supply. I refuse to keep such a power supply in my house. If you get your chargers mixed up and plug a 12V only into your phone/tablet/laptop, you could fry your device. And, on the flip side, you can't use any USB-C power supply laying around to power the Zimablade because the board doesn't have the power delivery circuitry to negotiate a proper USB-C power supply up to 12V (another reviewer tried and it just wouldn't work with normal USB-C supplies).

[@ACuteAura]

wtaf

[@Lorondos]

Now that the N100 is out, that is kind of my baseline for any low power computing device, anything less than that as a new device to purchase, very hard sell.

[@joshferguson4660]

I was going to purchase a Zimaboard or a Zimablade. I liked how Zima products had multiple connection options and expansion capabilities. I decided on a Chuwi LarkBox X mini pc. I found it on sale for $130. It has an Intel N100 process, 512 GB NVMe, 12 GB DDR5 3.1 and 3.2 USB, USB Type C, WiFi6 and dual 2.5 GB ports. Then I purchased a 5 bay 3.2 USB Type C DAS and x5 4TB drives for $220. Not a bad setup for $350. Throw in an external 5 TB HDD I had for a total of 25 TB RAID and it's like 15 W for the mini pc, so power usage isn't bad. I'm pleased with it so far, good thing is, if I upgrade the PC later, this mini pc can be turned into a nice OPNSense box with the dual 2.5 GB NIC.

[@nascompares]

Sit right buds. Just learnt about an absolute banger of system. Getting the details confirmed and will share properly Friday lunchtime at the latest. Sorry for the delay

[@Lorondos]

@@nascompares AOOSTAR? 😉

[@r0tb3rt]

Could you actually use it as a plex server connecting a Qnap TR-004 in RAID 5?

[@gswhite]

If you mean using the QNAP as the storage mechanism and sharing files to the Zima and into plex, than yes you can.

[@tylerbarr2740]

I've done something similar with jellyfin in a VM on a mini PC which reads and writes to an smb share on my qnap

[@nascompares]

Yes, definitely! And as for Plex performance, here's my vid (he said, arrogantly!!!!) - kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKCQm2xueaiAe6csi=fpn9yAgBSA83TCjP

[@vidx9]

Am I the only one who think it is expensive?

[@nascompares]

How so? I'm not arguing, just curious

[@crckdns]

Nope you aren't the only one. That's overrated and expensive for the abilities it has. Reasons? They were told in the second half of the video. I can just get a qnap 253D with additional 32GB of ram for a bit more than 200€ and will have a pretty potent nas

[@ragrerules]

I honestly think the Raspberry Pi 5 looks much more impressive than this

[@nascompares]

There is definitely pros and cons on either side. I think it will come down more to the skill set of the user in most cases.

[@Reprint001]

It feels to me like a product that will be an immediate regret purchase. Under powered CPU, lots of cables, USB blobs, a PCIE card hanging off it like a ZX81 RAM pack and power supplies sitting round it for storage: and a pain to store or carry around. The custom build will be interesting though. Especially OS choice as high quality Linux drivers for WiFi 6E are thin on the ground and you need a USB dongle that uses a decent chipset (Mediatek) and they cost about the same as the Zimablade alone (they are cheaper on AliExpress though).

[@nascompares]

I think the most/hackable approach to the upgrades is part of the appeal for many tbh. It was never gonna win awards on asthetics in its 'bits and bobs' form, but I do think it could be great for those looking to experiment with the tech/server market and at $64, it's not a bit dent on the wallet. That said...that CPU is ollllllld

[@shanent5793]

Those CPUs aren't just old, the N3450 is discontinued and the N3350 is just as old and not far behind. It's just a cash grab to dispose of junk parts that are unsuitable for new designs and I'm surprised that this video isn't just a straightforward "no"

[@wcg66]

As if Zima is going to make a lot of money off of this. It’s $64 ffs.