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Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

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Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#31

Post by newsclues »

paldepind2 wrote: post #18
newsclues wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s proprietary and easy mini homelab equipment for people who have an interest in home servers but not the time, skills or skills to setup their own.

Yes, I get that and I think it's a very cool device (given that it has sufficient IO for ones purpose). What I don't understand is why the casing around the board itself is so well designed and good looking. To me it looks like a "finished" self-contained device on its own. But if you use it together with, say, 2 3.5" HDDs you'll surely need some enclosure around the enclosure. At that point an "ugly" Raspberry PI-st…

Because they are selling a solution, not a single board computer for people who want to really tinker.

It's for people who want to plug it in, follow instructions from a YouTube video and leave it alone.

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#32

Post by Mistletoe »

alias_neo wrote: post #27
justinclift wrote: post #6

> This variant of the board costs 200 USD ... Doesn't sound like a good deal when compared with 2nd hand microservers and small form factor PCs from Ebay. Things like these: ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/175917817224 ⇦ 2x NVMe slots ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 ⇦ 4x 3.5" drives, ECC memory capable Note - I don't know those sellers.

We don't all live in countries where electricity is near-free. In the UK, it would cost more in electricity than the $200 Zimaboard to run one of those eBay machines for a single year. e.g. 90W 24/7 for a year is ~£212 (~$258 US), 60W 24/7: ~£142 ($173 US) In this price range, power-consumption is a _major_ decision factor.

The HP Prodesk is 12W idle though. I think the Zimaboard is 8w idle.

I agree that power consumption is a big cost that people don’t think about though.

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#33

Post by Semaphor »

hddherman wrote: post #16
justinclift wrote: post #6

> This variant of the board costs 200 USD ... Doesn't sound like a good deal when compared with 2nd hand microservers and small form factor PCs from Ebay. Things like these: ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/175917817224 ⇦ 2x NVMe slots ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 ⇦ 4x 3.5" drives, ECC memory capable Note - I don't know those sellers.

Author here. Yes, you can get a better deal if you don't care about the noise, but I value silence higher than having the best performance per dollar.

See my comment here [0], passively cooled thin clients exist.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37820458

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#34

Post by andruby »

pmontra wrote: post #20

If you care about Sata3 interfaces, the Odroid HC4 has two of them with vertical disk holders. https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-hc4/odroid-hc4 The one I'm using as home server is consuming 3.48 W now with a Samsung 850 SSD (1 TB.)

I wanted to add the Odroid H3 here as well. I've got it running at 3~4W idle with a WD Black nvme m2 ssd. Standard x86 debian server installation. 16GB of sodimm ram (supports up to 64GB). 2x 2.5GbE ethernet. Passively cooled (fan optional). They sell enclosures with space for 2 disks. $129 (excl shipping)

Great for samba shares and a bunch of containers.

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3/

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#35

Post by zekica »

alias_neo wrote: post #27
justinclift wrote: post #6

> This variant of the board costs 200 USD ... Doesn't sound like a good deal when compared with 2nd hand microservers and small form factor PCs from Ebay. Things like these: ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/175917817224 ⇦ 2x NVMe slots ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 ⇦ 4x 3.5" drives, ECC memory capable Note - I don't know those sellers.

We don't all live in countries where electricity is near-free. In the UK, it would cost more in electricity than the $200 Zimaboard to run one of those eBay machines for a single year. e.g. 90W 24/7 for a year is ~£212 (~$258 US), 60W 24/7: ~£142 ($173 US) In this price range, power-consumption is a _major_ decision factor.

90W is peak power consumption for these. They idle at about 8-9W measured at the wall socket or $22-25/year.

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#36

Post by alias_neo »

zekica wrote: post #35
alias_neo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't all live in countries where electricity is near-free. In the UK, it would cost more in electricity than the $200 Zimaboard to run one of those eBay machines for a single year. e.g. 90W 24/7 for a year is ~£212 (~$258 US), 60W 24/7: ~£142 ($173 US) In this price range, power-consumption is a _major_ decision factor.

90W is peak power consumption for these. They idle at about 8-9W measured at the wall socket or $22-25/year.

That's why I included a 60W cost too. What's the point running hardware 24/7/365 is it's idle?

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#38

Post by Medox »

dangus wrote: post #2

These little boards are neat products but I think they tend to compare poorly to used “normal computers.” If you want a Zimaboard system with 8GB of RAM, you’re looking at 200 bucks. You have to get the mid-range one just to get 4 cores. I bought a used 2012 quad core Mac mini which also has 2 SATA slots for about half that price. It idles at 13W according to Apple, and the person who sold it to me already had it upg…

My compromise between pre-built Thin Clients and SBC's was building my own Mini ITX PC. The 17x17cm form factor has just enough connectivity for the size, even PCIe.

The 2018 build came in at ~250$: Asrock J4105-ITX [1] + mini ITX case (with pico power supply included) + 2x4GB DDR4 + 128GB SSD. Runs ClearLinux and works perfectly 5 years later.

The 2024 Mini ITX build will probably feature an Intel N100, like the Asus Prime N100I-D D4-CSM [2] at around 120$ for the board itself, but I'm still looking into options.

[1] https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J4105-ITX/

[2] https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/cs...

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#39

Post by _cenw »

alias_neo wrote: post #27
justinclift wrote: post #6

> This variant of the board costs 200 USD ... Doesn't sound like a good deal when compared with 2nd hand microservers and small form factor PCs from Ebay. Things like these: ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/175917817224 ⇦ 2x NVMe slots ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 ⇦ 4x 3.5" drives, ECC memory capable Note - I don't know those sellers.

We don't all live in countries where electricity is near-free. In the UK, it would cost more in electricity than the $200 Zimaboard to run one of those eBay machines for a single year. e.g. 90W 24/7 for a year is ~£212 (~$258 US), 60W 24/7: ~£142 ($173 US) In this price range, power-consumption is a _major_ decision factor.

More reason to buy the kind of passively cooled mini PC people get as pfSense routers from AliExpress & co. You get Jasper Lake (2021) or even Alder Lake (2023) instead of the much older Apollo Lake from 2016. The only thing you really miss out on is the form factor and the PCIe slot.

Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

#40

Post by _cenw »

ZimaBoard has my favorite garbled mess SEO page.

https://www.zimaboard.com/blade/resident-evil-village-coming...

If you manage to decipher anything from this, let us all know. I feel like I'm missing out on the wisdom of Jerry, presumably the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2077.

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