I really wish there was a device like this that could be used as a type of "blade server" that could be inserted into a standard 1u/2u short-depth rack mounted chassis. That would let me re-use my existing 8u wallmounted rack instead of a shelf with zip-ties.
Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
61–70 of 171 posts
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#62Does it have IPMI?
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#63> 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.
If you want low power, check out the N100 systems that are out now. They use like 3W. I bought the N200 from this deal recently and it's a great little machine that can handle a lot of Plex transcodes https://slickdeals.net/f/16934029-msi-cubi-n-adl-dual-nic-in...
It's interesting that these N100 systems can cost less than some of the Zima products. So for me, I don't see much of an upside of going with them.
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#64I really wish there was a device like this that could be used as a type of "blade server" that could be inserted into a standard 1u/2u short-depth rack mounted chassis. That would let me re-use my existing 8u wallmounted rack instead of a shelf with zip-ties.
Check out compute blade https://docs.computeblade.com/
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#65ZimaBoard 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.
This looks like a puzzle... or the output from a dysfunctional LLM.
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#66> 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.
You can’t compare used products with brand new ones. You should compare with a used zimaboard market price.
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#67Earlier 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.
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.
I recently got one of those passive boxes with an N5105 for opnsense. But I found it ran pretty hot. I was able to replace the thermal paste and shim the cooler a bit to get it closer to the CPU (there was originally a huge gap they bridged with a glob of paste), and it lowered the temps a bit, but it still hung out around 60-65c afterward. I think that could be OK, but it still just felt too warm too the touch. I ended up placing a USB 5V fan on the outside of the case and now it sits around 40-45c which I'm more happy with. But now I have a fan running 24/7 running on my passive device.
At the end of this ordeal, I bought another machine (MSI Cubi-N with an N200) for cheaper than the Topton Aliexpress job, which includes an internal fan. The fan is super quiet and the build quality is way better. And it comes from a reputable manufacturer which I trust more to not load any weird stuff into the bootloader. If I could do it again, I'd probably try to make my Opnsense router out of an MSI Cubi N with an N100 or N200, in both cases it would have been cheaper, more powerful, and use less electricity than the Aliexpress passive one. The only possible hiccup would be non-Intel nics that the Cubi comes with.
Just some perspective from someone who recently bought a couple of these devices.
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#68I actually have one, installed Ubuntu and Ansible-Nas on it. Here is me lsblk output: its supposed to have 32GB MMC space, I only got 14GB. I wrote them an email about it, they asked for confirmation of my order only to then ignore me.
mmcblk0 ... 14.7G
At and while I am at it, I can not access the docker services from LAN even though I can ssh into it and I can locally via w3m access the services like hemdall hosted thought docker. Any idea what may fix this?
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#69Tbh second hand USFF or SFF PCs make excellent home servers. They have powerful x86_64 CPUs, are power efficient and can be had for sub $100
Re: Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup
#70Earlier 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.
If you want low power, check out the N100 systems that are out now. They use like 3W. I bought the N200 from this deal recently and it's a great little machine that can handle a lot of Plex transcodes https://slickdeals.net/f/16934029-msi-cubi-n-adl-dual-nic-in... It's interesting that these N100 systems can cost less than some of the Zima products. So for me, I don't see much of an upside of going with them.
As I read through the article I came to exactly the same conclusion.
I have an N95 mini PC that was $195 CAD, which came with 16GB RAM and a 500GB NVMe. It will also hold one SATA drive. All in a single box, although it is slightly larger and has a fan.
The NVMe slot on the Orange Pi 5 I use also keeps that mess down to a minimum. Power + network and that's a finished setup.
Edit: There are a TON of options in this space now. The value of 10 year old eBay gear is questionable at best.