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Zimaboard: The closest thing to my dream home server setup

348 points by hddherman 3y ago

pmarreck 3y ago
NixOS makes ZFS feel like part of the kernel again if you configure it to only use ZFS-compatible kernels. Had that setup for about 2 years now. I bricked or trashed too many BTRFS drive setups to ever trust it again. If I went to anything else it would be bcachefs.
dangus 3y ago
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 upgraded to 16GB of RAM. This is a machine with the “Apple tax,” i.e., a higher resale value than a PC. You can jump on eBay and have a blast with “HP EliteDesk” as your search term. I have to admit, though, a PCIe slot on a system this small is nice to have.
- Medox 3y ago
  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/ https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J4105-ITX/ [2] https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/csm/prime-n100i-d-d4-csm/ https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/cs...
  - dangus 3y ago
    This was really my first thought and preference since I’m interested mini-ITX as it is. There are a lot of really cool ITX cases out there these days. The cost is higher, but you could probably bring it way down with used components. The Zimaboard isn’t using new generation hardware anyway.
lakomen 3y ago
A server without ECC RAM is not a server, sorry. It's a catastrophe bound to happen.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Home server though? People use Raspberry Pis for home servers. Speaking of which, guessing the Raspberry Pi 5 with PCIe is going to give the Zimaboard a run for its money.
- WJW 3y ago
  This makes me think: is there some sort of kernel plugin that ECC-ifies existing memory in software? Similar to how you can implement RAID in software. I even vaguely remember a kernel module (?) that transparently performed in-RAM compression so that you effectively used less memory at the cost of increased CPU usage. Can't find it anymore though.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    > remember a kernel module (?) that transparently performed in-RAM compression Zram? https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.html https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.html It won't ECC your memory, but it can handle compression just fine.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- _bizg 3y ago
  Ok, boom
- _cenw 3y ago
  Just remember, corruption happens outside the memory too.
  - nirav72 3y ago
    Yes. Ive seen cheap/bad sata cables cause all kinds of problems for people running home servers.
okramcivokram 3y ago
There’s also the upcoming Zima Blade that is very tiny too, quite a bit cheaper, with a SO-DIMM slot, single Ethernet port, and USB-C powered.
- thekombustor 3y ago
  The Zima Blade isn't actually USB-C powered - it's just a USB-C port carrying a raw 12V. No PD negotiation supported. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1bbD1kw334 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1bbD1kw334 Honestly, for me, total dealbreaker for a product like this. Not only will it never work with anything other than the original PSU, that PSU will likely fry anything else you plug it into.
  - mike_d 3y ago
    Which is perfectly in spec. Feel free to email the USB Implementers Forum and let them know they are clowns and USB-C was a mistake. USB-C simply describes a connector. USB-PD is one of many optional power over USB-C specifications you can use, or choose not to use. Heck, USB-PD v1 supports power delivery over USB-A connectors.
    - nrp 3y ago
      This is incorrect. A USB-C power source can’t be in-spec if it doesn’t supply 5V by default. Other voltages or alt modes can be negotiated after that, but everything starts at 5V. This is defined in the base “ Universal Serial Bus Type-C Cable and Connector Specification”, not the optional USB-PD spec.
      - mike_d 3y ago
        A common misconception, Wikipedia spells it out maybe clearer than I did: "A device with a Type-C connector does not necessarily implement any USB transfer protocol, USB Power Delivery, or any given Alternate Mode: the Type-C connector is common to several technologies." The document you mention is the specification for implementing USB 3.0 on a USB type C connector.
justinclift 3y ago
> 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 https://www.ebay.com/itm/175917817224 ⇦ 2x NVMe slots ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 ⇦ 4x 3.5" drives, ECC memory capable Note - I don't know those sellers.
- hddherman 3y ago
  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.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Yeah, that's fair. The first option there (HP ProDesk 600 G4 Mini) do seem to have a reputation for being noisy, though replacing the fan with something quieter (eg Noctua) seems to be what people do: https://www.reddit.com/r/minilab/comments/zlowh2/hp_prodesk_600_g4_mini_reduce_fan_noise/ https://www.reddit.com/r/minilab/comments/zlowh2/hp_prodesk_...
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    See my comment here [0], passively cooled thin clients exist. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37820458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37820458
- densh 3y ago
  While comparing server prices it’s useful add 3-4 years of electricity cost of running it mostly idle 24/7. In europe new small power efficient SoC boards often win in such comparison over used socketed systems.
- linsomniac 3y ago
  I have a couple of Dell versions similar to your first link, the Micro form factor. They are nice and compact, but they have heat issues. I have one running BlueIris security camera software and have to run it with the case off and an extra fan to keep it from going into thermal overload. The next step larger systems are probably a better bet.
paldepind2 3y ago
One thing I don't really understand about the Zimaboard is why it comes in such a good looking enclosure? If you want to use it with stuff connected to the PCIe/SATA ports you'll always need some extra enclosure/case anyway to keep things clean. At that point why not just ship a board like a Raspberry PI, etc? > btrfs has had some issues in the past, especially with the RAID5/6 setup I'm pretty sure that btrfs still has major issues with RAID 5 & 6, and that these RAID modes are not recommended to be used in anger.
- newsclues 3y ago
  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.
  - paldepind2 3y ago
    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-style board would have been just as good. Granted, OP makes good use of the board enclosure, but needs to DIY a case in order to do so.
    - newsclues 3y ago
      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.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Because the enclosure is the heat sink. It has to look more or less like that for functional reasons, and so making it pretty as well is no real extra cost.
- 3y ago
zokier 3y ago
I do think that in 2023 1Gbe is starting to feel bit outdated when 2.5(/5/10) Gbe is becoming commodity. Something like NanoPi R5S has 2x2.5Gbe, and a nvme slot, all in nice little low power package. Sure, it doesn't have sata slots that OP wants, but I'd imagine similar ARM/Rockchip devices are available in all sorts of configurations.
- okramcivokram 3y ago
  This one is x86 architecture, and if you need more speed, there's one 4x PCIe slot available for expansion.
  - Havoc 3y ago
    It’s works but that slot is pcie gen 2 if memory serves. Seems to work fine with gen 3 nvme ssds at lower speed though
explorigin 3y ago
Nothing against Zimaboard but the best part of the article (for me) is his cable organization shown in his conclusion. So pretty.
- pmontra 3y ago
  We had this other post from the same author on HN time ago https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/09/07/ikea-powered-homelab/ https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/09/07/ikea-powered-homelab/ It's about the setup of the wall.
- syntaxing 3y ago
  The author is using an IKEA Skadis setup which is pretty popular in the 3D printing community. There’s a bunch of prints available for it, highly recommend if you need a wall organization of some sort.
  - jimmcslim 3y ago
    Any chance you can share a list of your 'greatest hits' for IKEA Skadis-compatible 3d prints?
  - XCSme 3y ago
    Is it metal? Can it lead to a short circuit?
    - syntaxing 3y ago
      No, the board itself is fiber board
- huhtenberg 3y ago
  There's a sub for that - https://reddit.com/r/cableporn https://reddit.com/r/cableporn
pmontra 3y ago
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 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.)
- tarruda 3y ago
  Very cool, but I really like wall-mounting these ARM SBC near my router. This one seems unfit for that purpose. The argon one raspberry pi 4 case is very good for wall mounting, though it connects with the m.2 drive via USB 3, which kinda sucks.
- andruby 3y ago
  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/ https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3/
- derekp7 3y ago
  What speed can you get over ssh to that board? The big issue I had with the Raspberry Pi 4 when using it as a low-powered server is when I run my backups to it over ssh, the network transfers top out at about 20 MB/s (just raw transfer speed going to /dev/null) vs. around 100MB/s I get on a regular x86 board.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    I benchmarked it right now by copying a 6.1 GB file with scp from my laptop to the HC4 SSD. It eventually peaked between 77 and 80 MB/s (that's a B for bytes.) I have a 1 Gigabit interface and a 10 Gb/s cable so it reasonably saturated the interface. There were maybe another 10 or 20 MB/s to squeeze from it but I won't complain. It took 1m 13s.
- jefurii 3y ago
methou 3y ago
For those who are interested in faster network, can look at R86s variants: https://www.servethehome.com/the-gowin-r86s-revolution-low-power-2-5gbe-and-10gbe-intel-nvidia/ https://www.servethehome.com/the-gowin-r86s-revolution-low-p... The 10Gb NIC is actually an mellanox cx3 series with OCP connector, theretically you can replace it with some more interesting cards like cx5/6, or solarflare's
ferbass 3y ago
I've been running Zimaboard for the past one year and I have no regrets. I replaced 2 Pi 3 that I was using before go run Pi-Hole, Home Assistant and some other services. Power consumption is quite good as well, no regrets, indeed a good alternative to Pi and any other MiniPC.
hidden80 3y ago
[flagged]
_cenw 3y ago
ZimaBoard has my favorite garbled mess SEO page. https://www.zimaboard.com/blade/resident-evil-village-coming-this-spring/ 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.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  What is this, some sort of automatically generated attempt to have search engines associate their product with CP 2077?
- silvershell 3y ago
  Whoa! What were they thinking… or not thinking?
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  This looks like a puzzle... or the output from a dysfunctional LLM.
- hiatus 3y ago
  That reads very much like a markov chain-generated text.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
naikrovek 3y ago
am i still paranoid about the news that supermicro motherboards were modified by chinese manufacturers to add spying hardware? I don’t want to buy hardware anymore. oh, and for the record, fuck the People’s Republic of China.
- jcuenod 3y ago
  If you're referring to that rice-sized chip that was being soldered onto motherboards. IIRC, the authors of that piece on Bloomberg have a history of writing nonsense. This particular article got absolutely no external confirmation. The Risky Biz podcast had some good discussion around the time it came out.
syntaxing 3y ago
If they can update the CPU to either the N95 and N100, it would be the perfect machine. The current CPU is just too old.
bobse 3y ago
What is wyse 5070 extended?
jpdb 3y ago
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.
- bsima 3y ago
  Check out compute blade https://docs.computeblade.com/ https://docs.computeblade.com/
7e 3y ago
Does it have IPMI?
- Havoc 3y ago
  On a 120 buck device lol?
redder23 3y ago
I 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?
cramjabsyn 3y ago
Tbh 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
Daril 3y ago
After many years with 2 Raspberry Pi (3 version later upgraded to 4) I bought 2 Minisforum GK41 : 1 CPU J4125, 8GB RAM, 256 GB NVME, 2 Ethernet 1Gb/s, 1 SATA connector and internal slot for a SSD disk. It costed months ago more than 200 Euros, it is now available for less than 150 Euros. I am very satisfied, it is running Debian testing as server at home and office. The only drawback is the fan, but is very quiet. I measured the power consumption and it is around 5W per hour, the same amount of the Raspberry Pi 4.
oktwtf 3y ago
I’d really like to consolidate my FX8350, 32GB, 2xsata ssd, 4xhdd, 4port gig pcie nic server into a lower power consumption device. I think if it had dual 2.5g nics and dual nvme, plus a couple sata built in I’d be happy. But more than one drive keyed m.2 for nvme on a sbc isn’t common, especially with sata or a pcie slot. I tried a RockPro64, but it didn’t quite live up to the task.
jeo123 3y ago
2nd hand laptops like those X and T series easily beat this server with some RAM and SSD upgrades. I got T430 i3 and i5 for around 150 dollars a piece. I dont see the needs of Zima unless you really prefer new crippled compute. Even using Zulu or Rp5 or Op5 make more sense than Zima.
- hddherman 3y ago
  I've run the T430 as a server and it's faster, and a lot louder as well. That's the trade-off.
aftbit 3y ago
If you care about the noise and size, but not so much about looks, you can also pick up a nice N5105 box for about the same price from Amazon, but with tons of ethernet ports available. https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Appliance-HUNSN-Barebone-Storage/dp/B0B53MKZBX https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Appliance-HUNSN-Barebone-Sto...
aftbit 3y ago
This looks like a nice home server if you have power, size, and noise constraints. I enjoy used enterprise gear personally, but my total power consumption is about 15x what this board uses.
colordrops 3y ago
The perfect home server for me would be: * No larger than a very thick laptop * 2 SFP+ ports * 8 POE ports * zigbee, zwave, and maybe rtlsdr radio * large laptop battery as a UPS * built in TPU * decent CPU * at least integrated GPU, if not a slot for a discrete GPU * NVMe This would replace my large, noisy, power hungry rack with a single unit that would handle OPNSense, home automation, security cameras, and my various apps like photo management, nextcloud, mastodon, minecraft servers for the kids, etc I don't think anyone sells anything like this, but I think it might not be hard to build using Framework laptop parts, a cheap POE switch, and a custom built case...
faefox 3y ago
> "I suspect that a similarily configured Raspberry Pi 4/5 with all the accessories added on top would result in a price that’s quite similar to the cost of a top-of-the-line Zimaboard." With respect to the author, why would you not take 10 seconds to verify this claim? A cursory Google search shows that an 8 GB Pi 4 with passive case and PSU is ~$100 all-in. If you can wait a couple of weeks the Pi 5 offers a nice performance bump (and PCIe!) for about the same price factoring in the official active cooler and case.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hddherman 3y ago
  Hi, author here. I went ahead and did the math based on offerings in raspberrypi.dk since that's the reseller that the official Raspberry Pi website directs me to as someone living in Estonia. Raspberry Pi 4 8GB: 92.87 EUR "Armor Aluminium heatsink case for Raspberry Pi 4": 19.01 EUR Official Raspberry Pi power supply: 10.80 EUR 32GB microSD card: 12.17 EUR (and on sale) At this point the subtotal is 134.85 EUR (~142 USD). Budget about 10-20 EUR on shipping on top of that, so about 150 EUR. And to run two SATA SSD-s off of the Raspberry Pi, you'd need an extra USB to SATA adapters. ICY BOX ones are quite good, those are about 15-20 EUR each, and are unlikely to work properly because of power limitations. I've done the testing in the past, one SSD is OK, two is a bit too much for the board, so you'd need to rig them up with external power, adding cost. To have something similar, we're looking at about 180+ EUR (~190 USD) worth of gear to replicate what we'd find with a Zimaboard, and with trade-offs and inferior results (USB-SATA is worse than plain SATA). I think it's a fair comparison, at least with EU market prices.
  - teleforce 3y ago
    Thanks OP for the breakdown of potential cost of similar Pi 4 set up. Interestingly, based on the PiHut prices, the total cost of 8GB RPi 5, power supply, heat sink with fan (active cooler) and case will be around £90. A high quality 128GB microSD card is around £9 and that makes a basic server RPi 5 setup to be just within £100. Add to the fact it has a spare PCIe slot for potential Gen 3.0 of high speed SATA interface and now the RPi 5 is even less power hungry compared to the previous version, the mini home server with RPi is very tempting, indeed.
zamadatix 3y ago
I think there is an over-focus on being fanless for silence and that leads to wandering down really niche sets of boards like this almost for the sake of looking for a niche board in itself. While it sounds extremely boring, a standard mini PC (called a "TinyMiniMicro" in this, Serve The Home phrasing) will almost always be a significantly better device, limit the fan speed to your liking (I typically go around 30 percent, can barely hear them with your ear up to the fan). If your goal is to 3d print a custom case, mount things externally, and tinker these kinds of things that's great but I feel a lot of tech folks get caught up in "tinkering" needing to equal "the best option". I'm not saying there is anything wrong with tinkering, I've actually got a few devices mentioned like the mentioned Flashstor 12 and it's a lot of fun to mess with. At the same time, I'd sooner call them my dream tinkering devices than my dream home server.
- viraptor 3y ago
  I'm not sure that over-focus. Lots of small devices (especially older ones) don't have user-accessible fan speed control unfortunately and even if they do, fans degrade over time. I'm running one of the older NUCs as a home server right now and I'm really tempted to replace it with zimablade. Sure, I could replace the current loud fan, then play around with tweaks to slow it down while preserving the performance. But... I could just go passive instead. It's literally the opposite of tinkering too much.
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    Disabling the fan is too much work so you want to go to a board which requires you to come up with your own external drive mounting solution? Maybe we just have different ideas on what takes lots of tinkering, which is fair, as I'll take figuring out a software setting over building something or having external mount components. I'd recommend something like a Beelink over an old NUC though. Tends to be cheaper than an old NUC for better performance and you can just set the fan speed directly in the BIOS on every model I've tried. The larger and thicker the fan the less likely it'll ever run into issues (or make noise in the first place) so cubes where the top is just a large fan work best. Boards with tiny fans are, somewhat unintuitively, very prone to making lots of fan noise over time.
oneplane 3y ago
Zima is average-good at branding and maybe styling and that's about it. The hardware is pretty much random ODM low power designs, but based on ancient 2016 era releases. Maybe it's just a company in Hong Kong trying to offload old inventory, maybe it's something else (i.e. Intel SIPP), but I wouldn't recommend it either way, unless power is free and you really want to minimally reduce e-waste (which is what this is). You can get practically any later generation for the same (or lower) price with the same (or better) features but higher performance. Even a 5W design from Qotom from the same era would be a better choice. An example: an ODM has a X30G-N5100 which is a 4-core 4-threads based Intel SoC from 2021 with (LP)DDR4 support burst to 2.8Ghz and a TDP of 6W. Normally you'd not have them burn full power all the time and you're more likely to use 3 to 4W. It has modern features, modern security and mainstream support for all of it. And if that's too new for you, you can get a J4xxx or N4xxx series box for half the price of that zima, but double the performance.
- hendersoon 3y ago
  It does have a PCI-e slot, which is unusual in competing products. But yeah, otherwise it's a matter of marketing particularly with the Zimaboard. Their new Zimablade is much more interesting; it's still old slow tech but they retained the PCI-e slot and dropped the price all the way down to $65 US.
  - aborsy 3y ago
    The recently released RPI 5 offers PCIe connectivity I believe.
    - hendersoon 3y ago
      It does, but it uses an unusual cable. There are tons of SBCs with PCI-e M.2 slots too. The neat thing about the two Zimas is they have a standard PCI-e slot.
- aborsy 3y ago
  But the selling point of this board is IO not CPU: 2X SATA, ePCIe and 2X NIC. You can run proxmox on it with TrueNAS in RAID1 and pfsense/opnsense in a vm.
bdcravens 3y ago
> There is no native way to mount the two SATA drives to the Zimaboard. The creators of the board do sell a metal bracket, but it doesn’t seem to integrate that well to the board. Funny enough, I just had the ad for the ZimaCube pop up on Facebook (holds 6 drives, up to 164TB) https://zimacube.zimaboard.com/ https://zimacube.zimaboard.com/
- justinclift 3y ago
  Looked interesting, though there are some inconsistencies with the core count for the "Octa" version. The intro blurb up the top says it's 12 core, while the spec listing further down says it's 10 core. It's not clear if the ram is ECC either. With 6x SATA + 4x NVMe + 32GB RAM they're targetting more professional users, which should mean ECC ram is available. --- Looking a bit more in depth, it doesn't look like any of their cpu choices support ECC: ∙ https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/226261/intel-core-i51235u-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/226261/... ∙ https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231803/intel-processor-n100-6m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231803/... So, that's a fail. Hard pass unfortunately. :(
- vamega 3y ago
  I think the N100 specs there don't make sense. It says it'll have a PCIE 3.0 x 16 port, but the N100 chip only has a total of 9 lanes. Probably only applies to th 1235U version.
- dr_kiszonka 3y ago
  That "Chat GPT for all your files" sounds very intriguing. I have been looking for something like this that I could run locally on 4090, but haven't had much luck.
robsalasco 3y ago
How is the performance comparable to a rpi 5?
sharts 3y ago
More than anything the Zimaboard website just turns me off to buying this, ever. For an enthusiast community, start w/ raw specs up front. Not fancy picture of what's possible. We all know what's possible. The website screams of trying too hard w/ the specs eventually listed when you scroll all the way to the bottom of the pages. Perhaps the target is people that don't know anything about technology? Or maybe to show off some web dev skills.

348 points by hddherman 3y ago

NixOS makes ZFS feel like part of the kernel again if you configure it to only use ZFS-compatible kernels. Had that setup for about 2 years now. I bricked or trashed too many BTRFS drive setups to ever trust it again. If I went to anything else it would be bcachefs.

dangus 3y ago

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 upgraded to 16GB of RAM. This is a machine with the “Apple tax,” i.e., a higher resale value than a PC. You can jump on eBay and have a blast with “HP EliteDesk” as your search term. I have to admit, though, a PCIe slot on a system this small is nice to have.

Medox 3y ago
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/ https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J4105-ITX/ [2] https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/csm/prime-n100i-d-d4-csm/ https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/cs...
- dangus 3y ago
  This was really my first thought and preference since I’m interested mini-ITX as it is. There are a lot of really cool ITX cases out there these days. The cost is higher, but you could probably bring it way down with used components. The Zimaboard isn’t using new generation hardware anyway.

lakomen 3y ago

A server without ECC RAM is not a server, sorry. It's a catastrophe bound to happen.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
Home server though? People use Raspberry Pis for home servers. Speaking of which, guessing the Raspberry Pi 5 with PCIe is going to give the Zimaboard a run for its money.
WJW 3y ago
This makes me think: is there some sort of kernel plugin that ECC-ifies existing memory in software? Similar to how you can implement RAID in software. I even vaguely remember a kernel module (?) that transparently performed in-RAM compression so that you effectively used less memory at the cost of increased CPU usage. Can't find it anymore though.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > remember a kernel module (?) that transparently performed in-RAM compression Zram? https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.html https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.html It won't ECC your memory, but it can handle compression just fine.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
_bizg 3y ago
Ok, boom
_cenw 3y ago
Just remember, corruption happens outside the memory too.
- nirav72 3y ago
  Yes. Ive seen cheap/bad sata cables cause all kinds of problems for people running home servers.

okramcivokram 3y ago

There’s also the upcoming Zima Blade that is very tiny too, quite a bit cheaper, with a SO-DIMM slot, single Ethernet port, and USB-C powered.

thekombustor 3y ago
The Zima Blade isn't actually USB-C powered - it's just a USB-C port carrying a raw 12V. No PD negotiation supported. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1bbD1kw334 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1bbD1kw334 Honestly, for me, total dealbreaker for a product like this. Not only will it never work with anything other than the original PSU, that PSU will likely fry anything else you plug it into.
- mike_d 3y ago
  Which is perfectly in spec. Feel free to email the USB Implementers Forum and let them know they are clowns and USB-C was a mistake. USB-C simply describes a connector. USB-PD is one of many optional power over USB-C specifications you can use, or choose not to use. Heck, USB-PD v1 supports power delivery over USB-A connectors.
  - nrp 3y ago
    This is incorrect. A USB-C power source can’t be in-spec if it doesn’t supply 5V by default. Other voltages or alt modes can be negotiated after that, but everything starts at 5V. This is defined in the base “ Universal Serial Bus Type-C Cable and Connector Specification”, not the optional USB-PD spec.
    - mike_d 3y ago
      A common misconception, Wikipedia spells it out maybe clearer than I did: "A device with a Type-C connector does not necessarily implement any USB transfer protocol, USB Power Delivery, or any given Alternate Mode: the Type-C connector is common to several technologies." The document you mention is the specification for implementing USB 3.0 on a USB type C connector.

justinclift 3y ago

> 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 https://www.ebay.com/itm/175917817224 ⇦ 2x NVMe slots ∙ https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 https://www.ebay.com/itm/204477355543 ⇦ 4x 3.5" drives, ECC memory capable Note - I don't know those sellers.

hddherman 3y ago
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.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Yeah, that's fair. The first option there (HP ProDesk 600 G4 Mini) do seem to have a reputation for being noisy, though replacing the fan with something quieter (eg Noctua) seems to be what people do: https://www.reddit.com/r/minilab/comments/zlowh2/hp_prodesk_600_g4_mini_reduce_fan_noise/ https://www.reddit.com/r/minilab/comments/zlowh2/hp_prodesk_...
- Semaphor 3y ago
  See my comment here [0], passively cooled thin clients exist. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37820458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37820458
densh 3y ago
While comparing server prices it’s useful add 3-4 years of electricity cost of running it mostly idle 24/7. In europe new small power efficient SoC boards often win in such comparison over used socketed systems.
linsomniac 3y ago
I have a couple of Dell versions similar to your first link, the Micro form factor. They are nice and compact, but they have heat issues. I have one running BlueIris security camera software and have to run it with the case off and an extra fan to keep it from going into thermal overload. The next step larger systems are probably a better bet.

paldepind2 3y ago

One thing I don't really understand about the Zimaboard is why it comes in such a good looking enclosure? If you want to use it with stuff connected to the PCIe/SATA ports you'll always need some extra enclosure/case anyway to keep things clean. At that point why not just ship a board like a Raspberry PI, etc? > btrfs has had some issues in the past, especially with the RAID5/6 setup I'm pretty sure that btrfs still has major issues with RAID 5 & 6, and that these RAID modes are not recommended to be used in anger.

newsclues 3y ago
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.
- paldepind2 3y ago
  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-style board would have been just as good. Granted, OP makes good use of the board enclosure, but needs to DIY a case in order to do so.
  - newsclues 3y ago
    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.
bluGill 3y ago
Because the enclosure is the heat sink. It has to look more or less like that for functional reasons, and so making it pretty as well is no real extra cost.
3y ago

zokier 3y ago

I do think that in 2023 1Gbe is starting to feel bit outdated when 2.5(/5/10) Gbe is becoming commodity. Something like NanoPi R5S has 2x2.5Gbe, and a nvme slot, all in nice little low power package. Sure, it doesn't have sata slots that OP wants, but I'd imagine similar ARM/Rockchip devices are available in all sorts of configurations.

okramcivokram 3y ago
This one is x86 architecture, and if you need more speed, there's one 4x PCIe slot available for expansion.
- Havoc 3y ago
  It’s works but that slot is pcie gen 2 if memory serves. Seems to work fine with gen 3 nvme ssds at lower speed though

explorigin 3y ago

Nothing against Zimaboard but the best part of the article (for me) is his cable organization shown in his conclusion. So pretty.

pmontra 3y ago
We had this other post from the same author on HN time ago https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/09/07/ikea-powered-homelab/ https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/09/07/ikea-powered-homelab/ It's about the setup of the wall.
syntaxing 3y ago
The author is using an IKEA Skadis setup which is pretty popular in the 3D printing community. There’s a bunch of prints available for it, highly recommend if you need a wall organization of some sort.
- jimmcslim 3y ago
  Any chance you can share a list of your 'greatest hits' for IKEA Skadis-compatible 3d prints?
- XCSme 3y ago
  Is it metal? Can it lead to a short circuit?
  - syntaxing 3y ago
    No, the board itself is fiber board
huhtenberg 3y ago
There's a sub for that - https://reddit.com/r/cableporn https://reddit.com/r/cableporn

pmontra 3y ago

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 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.)

tarruda 3y ago
Very cool, but I really like wall-mounting these ARM SBC near my router. This one seems unfit for that purpose. The argon one raspberry pi 4 case is very good for wall mounting, though it connects with the m.2 drive via USB 3, which kinda sucks.
andruby 3y ago
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/ https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3/
derekp7 3y ago
What speed can you get over ssh to that board? The big issue I had with the Raspberry Pi 4 when using it as a low-powered server is when I run my backups to it over ssh, the network transfers top out at about 20 MB/s (just raw transfer speed going to /dev/null) vs. around 100MB/s I get on a regular x86 board.
- pmontra 3y ago
  I benchmarked it right now by copying a 6.1 GB file with scp from my laptop to the HC4 SSD. It eventually peaked between 77 and 80 MB/s (that's a B for bytes.) I have a 1 Gigabit interface and a 10 Gb/s cable so it reasonably saturated the interface. There were maybe another 10 or 20 MB/s to squeeze from it but I won't complain. It took 1m 13s.
jefurii 3y ago

methou 3y ago

For those who are interested in faster network, can look at R86s variants: https://www.servethehome.com/the-gowin-r86s-revolution-low-power-2-5gbe-and-10gbe-intel-nvidia/ https://www.servethehome.com/the-gowin-r86s-revolution-low-p... The 10Gb NIC is actually an mellanox cx3 series with OCP connector, theretically you can replace it with some more interesting cards like cx5/6, or solarflare's

ferbass 3y ago

I've been running Zimaboard for the past one year and I have no regrets. I replaced 2 Pi 3 that I was using before go run Pi-Hole, Home Assistant and some other services. Power consumption is quite good as well, no regrets, indeed a good alternative to Pi and any other MiniPC.

hidden80 3y ago

[flagged]

_cenw 3y ago

ZimaBoard has my favorite garbled mess SEO page. https://www.zimaboard.com/blade/resident-evil-village-coming-this-spring/ 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.

sidewndr46 3y ago
What is this, some sort of automatically generated attempt to have search engines associate their product with CP 2077?
silvershell 3y ago
Whoa! What were they thinking… or not thinking?
SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
This looks like a puzzle... or the output from a dysfunctional LLM.
hiatus 3y ago
That reads very much like a markov chain-generated text.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

naikrovek 3y ago

am i still paranoid about the news that supermicro motherboards were modified by chinese manufacturers to add spying hardware? I don’t want to buy hardware anymore. oh, and for the record, fuck the People’s Republic of China.

jcuenod 3y ago
If you're referring to that rice-sized chip that was being soldered onto motherboards. IIRC, the authors of that piece on Bloomberg have a history of writing nonsense. This particular article got absolutely no external confirmation. The Risky Biz podcast had some good discussion around the time it came out.

syntaxing 3y ago

If they can update the CPU to either the N95 and N100, it would be the perfect machine. The current CPU is just too old.

bobse 3y ago

What is wyse 5070 extended?

jpdb 3y ago

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.

bsima 3y ago
Check out compute blade https://docs.computeblade.com/ https://docs.computeblade.com/

7e 3y ago

Does it have IPMI?

Havoc 3y ago
On a 120 buck device lol?

redder23 3y ago

I 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?

cramjabsyn 3y ago

Tbh 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

Daril 3y ago

After many years with 2 Raspberry Pi (3 version later upgraded to 4) I bought 2 Minisforum GK41 : 1 CPU J4125, 8GB RAM, 256 GB NVME, 2 Ethernet 1Gb/s, 1 SATA connector and internal slot for a SSD disk. It costed months ago more than 200 Euros, it is now available for less than 150 Euros. I am very satisfied, it is running Debian testing as server at home and office. The only drawback is the fan, but is very quiet. I measured the power consumption and it is around 5W per hour, the same amount of the Raspberry Pi 4.

oktwtf 3y ago

I’d really like to consolidate my FX8350, 32GB, 2xsata ssd, 4xhdd, 4port gig pcie nic server into a lower power consumption device. I think if it had dual 2.5g nics and dual nvme, plus a couple sata built in I’d be happy. But more than one drive keyed m.2 for nvme on a sbc isn’t common, especially with sata or a pcie slot. I tried a RockPro64, but it didn’t quite live up to the task.

jeo123 3y ago

2nd hand laptops like those X and T series easily beat this server with some RAM and SSD upgrades. I got T430 i3 and i5 for around 150 dollars a piece. I dont see the needs of Zima unless you really prefer new crippled compute. Even using Zulu or Rp5 or Op5 make more sense than Zima.

hddherman 3y ago
I've run the T430 as a server and it's faster, and a lot louder as well. That's the trade-off.

aftbit 3y ago

If you care about the noise and size, but not so much about looks, you can also pick up a nice N5105 box for about the same price from Amazon, but with tons of ethernet ports available. https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Appliance-HUNSN-Barebone-Storage/dp/B0B53MKZBX https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Appliance-HUNSN-Barebone-Sto...

aftbit 3y ago

This looks like a nice home server if you have power, size, and noise constraints. I enjoy used enterprise gear personally, but my total power consumption is about 15x what this board uses.

colordrops 3y ago

The perfect home server for me would be: * No larger than a very thick laptop * 2 SFP+ ports * 8 POE ports * zigbee, zwave, and maybe rtlsdr radio * large laptop battery as a UPS * built in TPU * decent CPU * at least integrated GPU, if not a slot for a discrete GPU * NVMe This would replace my large, noisy, power hungry rack with a single unit that would handle OPNSense, home automation, security cameras, and my various apps like photo management, nextcloud, mastodon, minecraft servers for the kids, etc I don't think anyone sells anything like this, but I think it might not be hard to build using Framework laptop parts, a cheap POE switch, and a custom built case...

faefox 3y ago

> "I suspect that a similarily configured Raspberry Pi 4/5 with all the accessories added on top would result in a price that’s quite similar to the cost of a top-of-the-line Zimaboard." With respect to the author, why would you not take 10 seconds to verify this claim? A cursory Google search shows that an 8 GB Pi 4 with passive case and PSU is ~$100 all-in. If you can wait a couple of weeks the Pi 5 offers a nice performance bump (and PCIe!) for about the same price factoring in the official active cooler and case.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hddherman 3y ago
Hi, author here. I went ahead and did the math based on offerings in raspberrypi.dk since that's the reseller that the official Raspberry Pi website directs me to as someone living in Estonia. Raspberry Pi 4 8GB: 92.87 EUR "Armor Aluminium heatsink case for Raspberry Pi 4": 19.01 EUR Official Raspberry Pi power supply: 10.80 EUR 32GB microSD card: 12.17 EUR (and on sale) At this point the subtotal is 134.85 EUR (~142 USD). Budget about 10-20 EUR on shipping on top of that, so about 150 EUR. And to run two SATA SSD-s off of the Raspberry Pi, you'd need an extra USB to SATA adapters. ICY BOX ones are quite good, those are about 15-20 EUR each, and are unlikely to work properly because of power limitations. I've done the testing in the past, one SSD is OK, two is a bit too much for the board, so you'd need to rig them up with external power, adding cost. To have something similar, we're looking at about 180+ EUR (~190 USD) worth of gear to replicate what we'd find with a Zimaboard, and with trade-offs and inferior results (USB-SATA is worse than plain SATA). I think it's a fair comparison, at least with EU market prices.
- teleforce 3y ago
  Thanks OP for the breakdown of potential cost of similar Pi 4 set up. Interestingly, based on the PiHut prices, the total cost of 8GB RPi 5, power supply, heat sink with fan (active cooler) and case will be around £90. A high quality 128GB microSD card is around £9 and that makes a basic server RPi 5 setup to be just within £100. Add to the fact it has a spare PCIe slot for potential Gen 3.0 of high speed SATA interface and now the RPi 5 is even less power hungry compared to the previous version, the mini home server with RPi is very tempting, indeed.

zamadatix 3y ago

I think there is an over-focus on being fanless for silence and that leads to wandering down really niche sets of boards like this almost for the sake of looking for a niche board in itself. While it sounds extremely boring, a standard mini PC (called a "TinyMiniMicro" in this, Serve The Home phrasing) will almost always be a significantly better device, limit the fan speed to your liking (I typically go around 30 percent, can barely hear them with your ear up to the fan). If your goal is to 3d print a custom case, mount things externally, and tinker these kinds of things that's great but I feel a lot of tech folks get caught up in "tinkering" needing to equal "the best option". I'm not saying there is anything wrong with tinkering, I've actually got a few devices mentioned like the mentioned Flashstor 12 and it's a lot of fun to mess with. At the same time, I'd sooner call them my dream tinkering devices than my dream home server.

viraptor 3y ago
I'm not sure that over-focus. Lots of small devices (especially older ones) don't have user-accessible fan speed control unfortunately and even if they do, fans degrade over time. I'm running one of the older NUCs as a home server right now and I'm really tempted to replace it with zimablade. Sure, I could replace the current loud fan, then play around with tweaks to slow it down while preserving the performance. But... I could just go passive instead. It's literally the opposite of tinkering too much.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  Disabling the fan is too much work so you want to go to a board which requires you to come up with your own external drive mounting solution? Maybe we just have different ideas on what takes lots of tinkering, which is fair, as I'll take figuring out a software setting over building something or having external mount components. I'd recommend something like a Beelink over an old NUC though. Tends to be cheaper than an old NUC for better performance and you can just set the fan speed directly in the BIOS on every model I've tried. The larger and thicker the fan the less likely it'll ever run into issues (or make noise in the first place) so cubes where the top is just a large fan work best. Boards with tiny fans are, somewhat unintuitively, very prone to making lots of fan noise over time.

oneplane 3y ago

Zima is average-good at branding and maybe styling and that's about it. The hardware is pretty much random ODM low power designs, but based on ancient 2016 era releases. Maybe it's just a company in Hong Kong trying to offload old inventory, maybe it's something else (i.e. Intel SIPP), but I wouldn't recommend it either way, unless power is free and you really want to minimally reduce e-waste (which is what this is). You can get practically any later generation for the same (or lower) price with the same (or better) features but higher performance. Even a 5W design from Qotom from the same era would be a better choice. An example: an ODM has a X30G-N5100 which is a 4-core 4-threads based Intel SoC from 2021 with (LP)DDR4 support burst to 2.8Ghz and a TDP of 6W. Normally you'd not have them burn full power all the time and you're more likely to use 3 to 4W. It has modern features, modern security and mainstream support for all of it. And if that's too new for you, you can get a J4xxx or N4xxx series box for half the price of that zima, but double the performance.

hendersoon 3y ago
It does have a PCI-e slot, which is unusual in competing products. But yeah, otherwise it's a matter of marketing particularly with the Zimaboard. Their new Zimablade is much more interesting; it's still old slow tech but they retained the PCI-e slot and dropped the price all the way down to $65 US.
- aborsy 3y ago
  The recently released RPI 5 offers PCIe connectivity I believe.
  - hendersoon 3y ago
    It does, but it uses an unusual cable. There are tons of SBCs with PCI-e M.2 slots too. The neat thing about the two Zimas is they have a standard PCI-e slot.
aborsy 3y ago
But the selling point of this board is IO not CPU: 2X SATA, ePCIe and 2X NIC. You can run proxmox on it with TrueNAS in RAID1 and pfsense/opnsense in a vm.

bdcravens 3y ago

> There is no native way to mount the two SATA drives to the Zimaboard. The creators of the board do sell a metal bracket, but it doesn’t seem to integrate that well to the board. Funny enough, I just had the ad for the ZimaCube pop up on Facebook (holds 6 drives, up to 164TB) https://zimacube.zimaboard.com/ https://zimacube.zimaboard.com/

justinclift 3y ago
Looked interesting, though there are some inconsistencies with the core count for the "Octa" version. The intro blurb up the top says it's 12 core, while the spec listing further down says it's 10 core. It's not clear if the ram is ECC either. With 6x SATA + 4x NVMe + 32GB RAM they're targetting more professional users, which should mean ECC ram is available. --- Looking a bit more in depth, it doesn't look like any of their cpu choices support ECC: ∙ https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/226261/intel-core-i51235u-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/226261/... ∙ https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231803/intel-processor-n100-6m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231803/... So, that's a fail. Hard pass unfortunately. :(
vamega 3y ago
I think the N100 specs there don't make sense. It says it'll have a PCIE 3.0 x 16 port, but the N100 chip only has a total of 9 lanes. Probably only applies to th 1235U version.
dr_kiszonka 3y ago
That "Chat GPT for all your files" sounds very intriguing. I have been looking for something like this that I could run locally on 4090, but haven't had much luck.

robsalasco 3y ago

How is the performance comparable to a rpi 5?

sharts 3y ago

More than anything the Zimaboard website just turns me off to buying this, ever. For an enthusiast community, start w/ raw specs up front. Not fancy picture of what's possible. We all know what's possible. The website screams of trying too hard w/ the specs eventually listed when you scroll all the way to the bottom of the pages. Perhaps the target is people that don't know anything about technology? Or maybe to show off some web dev skills.