Single Board Computer Review: Does Zima Board Stand Up to the Hype?

Some reviews& Idea using Zimaboard from my friends

@TechnoTim 20 Home Server Projects You Can Start TODAY - CasaOS + ZimaBoard

@HardwareHaven Haven ZimaBoard: The Home Server Swiss Army Knife

@CraftComputing Computing Move Over Raspberry Pi

@RaidOwl 10 Watt HA Proxmox Cluster ft. ZimaBoard

@2GuysTek Honey, I Shrunk the Firewall...AGAIN! - pfSense on a ZimaBoard!

Zimaboard 3d Printed Mount

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Time Stamps ⏱️
00:00 Zimaboad Single Board Computer
01:14 X86 Based
01:44 Low Wattage
02:40 Hardware Specs and Features
04:10 PCIe 5 Port Sata
05:48 Casa OS

#homelab #raspberrypi #sbc

[LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Some reviews & Idea using Zimaboard from my friends

@TechnoTim 20 Home Server Projects You Can Start TODAY - CasaOS + ZimaBoard

@HardwareHaven Haven ZimaBoard: The Home Server Swiss Army Knife

@CraftComputing Computing Move Over Raspberry Pi

@RaidOwl 10 Watt HA Proxmox Cluster ft. ZimaBoard

@2GuysTek Honey, I Shrunk the Firewall...AGAIN! - pfSense on a ZimaBoard!

[ProTechShow]

Power is expensive here. I've found a great use for the ZimaBoard as a hardened backup repository. The Zimaboard fits inside the chassis of the (desktop form factor) HomeLab server it's backing up. All drives are in the chassis’ internal cage, with some connected to the motherboard and some connected to the ZimaBoard. Keeps it nice, tidy, and low-power while providing full logical/administrative separation between live/backup. I'll get around to documenting it at some point!

[TechnoTim]

Thanks Tom! Glad it passed the TrueNAS test! 😅

[DyegoM]

I have had the Zima 832 for about 6 months now. It runs my home firewall with no issues so far, and no problem with the Realtek NICs.

[borisvokladski]

I use my 832 for software defined radio projects. The small size fits perfectly in small water proof boxes, so I can use it outside.

[JamesMusicCo]

I have the 832 and love it. Running TrueNAS with 2 HDDs (mirrored) and it barely pulls 15-20 watts. I chose to build a custom case out of leftover wood and standoffs. Came out great! There is even a “cpu fan” connection on the Zimaboard.

[serdalo]

Use it for a Proxmox cluster. Passive cooled, dual nic and a PCIe slot 👍🏽

[JasonsLabVideos]

Good video tom, i think these are starting to take over the Pi's :)

[IndianaDiy]

I’m buying this for something fun to play around with in my Home lab. But mainly using it as a teaching tool, I have some students who are just learning some fun stuff.

[BrunoDPO]

With the popularity of NUCs, the Zimaboard in my opinion will be just the entry point for those who wants to start a homelab. They are strong and reliable, but with NUCs from Intel or Beelink you get more powerful (and still not power hungry) processors which can do more things on virtualization as well as tasks like encoding videos for those who want to. Don't know if I am right, but that is my thought on this one... I love the Zimaboard still!

[TrTai]

I really like the idea, but I think this is going to be a "wait and see for gen 2/competitors" for me. It's almost there, I love the idea of having a low profile, low power x86 SBC, but in it's current incarnation, for my uses it's not quite there as someone who's working on trying to trim down my used server hardware (but keeps finding really tempting deals....) having some very small form factor x86 solutions will be great. I could get an adapter but I think built in PoE is the one really missed opportunity that I think would have netted the sale for me. Depending on project needs, I'll probably lean more towards a NUC-like, but there's definitely a nice niche and projects that benefit from this, just take a bit of carving out, and hopefully don't run into the Pi issue, prices have seemed to go up some more since when I first saw the hype train coming so we'll see how that pans out.

[mikeyfoofoo]

I was thinking Optiplex for a NAS was a better fit right when you showed it. Funny. Zima is a neat tinker thing for that wattage though.

[aytviewer]

CasaOS looks fantastic and easy to use. I am glad you talked about running alternative OS's on this board. Everyone does realize that CasaOS is a Chinese company, headquartered in Shanghai, PRC, right? Do not expect an ounce of privacy with your information and documents. If you read their FAQ about privacy on their website they say that it is open source and that they "try" to keep your information private. I would be really interested if someone could run a test with CasaOS to see if it is calling home to China and what information is being sent back. Thanks!

[paul]

I built a Truenas Scale on an Odroid H3, 16 GB ram, 500GB NVME (that's just what I had laying around), 2x 2TB SSD. The SSD's are attached to a plastic 2.5 -> 3.5" tray & I mounted the H3 board on top using long brass standoff's. On top of the whole thing I put a 120mm fan again mounted with long brass standoffs. This is a great learning platform for me (I'm struggling a bit with ZFS permissions), and it is currently serving as a third level backup of my Synology. I could have also used the EMMC as my boot drive and used the NVME slot to drive more SSD's ... although at that point just build yourself a big boy NAS <g>.

[MarcLachapelle]

I have one and I like it. I use it for my RO DNS, NUT upsmon and uptime Kuma. Since it uses only 6W I can shutdown my main servers (where my ADs are) when power goes down.

[justintime]

My Zimaboard is running pfsense and has been running well for a while now.

[doq]

I have a 216 with the SATA card deployed as a pure NAS and I like it it's pretty neat and also pretty much set it and forget it. Way better than what I was doing before.

[Pravartak]

I'm buying this for something fun to play around with in my home lab . But mainly using it as a teaching tool, i have some students who are just learning some fun stuff

[accesser]

Is this first generation from them ?
If so id be interested to see that gen2 might bring, such as faster nic

[DialMMicrocontrollr]

I have one and use it for Pfsense. Like you I would like to try it with 2 or 4 drives as a SAN