Because I'm an idiot and like to waste my money I've been buying all kinds of devices to start building a DIY or even unraid as an alternative to my Synology Diskstations which I think I've out-grown and I have just stumbled across Zimaboard and......using a PCI nvme adapter like you have show in your video to create some kind of frankenstine NAS that will offer out better performance for plex, which I let my family access remotely! I've ordered the 832 to expirement with! Great video :)
When they come out with an N5xxx or N6005-based unit with 16 GB of RAM and 2.5 GbE, then I'd be really interested for use as a Proxmox clustering setup...
Check out the ODROID H3 my man. That is what you're describing. Its $129 ($10 more than the ZIMA), it uses the N5105, has dual 2.5gbe, PCIe 3.0x4 (instead of 2.0 on the ZIMA), has M.2 NVMe, 2x Sata3, eMMC, way more I/O and can have up to 64gb DDR4 2933 RAM. You gotta add the RAM though. I have one running proxmox with pfsense, pihole, a proxy cache server, a deployment server for installing os's, observium for my network and a cloudflare tunnel. Its using about 10-12gb RAM of the 16gb I installed, only half the CPU and its also silent. I could run even more on it if I wanted to by increasing the RAM. Check it out if that's the sort of thing your looking for.
@@honestgoat Good recommendation. Imho zima board has few drawbacks (having 216): - emmc storage is mostly useless unless you plan to use it strictly for networking - There's nothing "hackable" about it. unless you want to add shutdown/reset buttons, you cant modify it - 2gb of ram are not enough and cpu is sloooow (better than my rpi3b thou) - It would be nicer to have enclosure, but if you fold cables and put ssd below, it's not that messy - I bought fujitsu esprimo q956 for the same price. Upgraded ram and ssd, it has i5-6500t which is roughly 4-5 times faster and it consumes 5.5w idle and 8w with very light load (zimaboard uses 2.5w idle and 7.5w at full load). Having much faster PC which consumes 6w idle more makes much more sense for me, it can be used as desktop, it can run many docker containers with php (for nextcloud, image gallery, ...) whereas zimaboard can't resize images and generate thumbnails fast enough. For me it's a great RPI replacement with faster I/O, better reliability, no GPIO or wifi, but higher models do not make sense imho, there are better alternatives for 200USD/EUR. And problem is that I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't know which devices are on the market and what exactly I need. Sadly youtube reviews are not objective - there are no comparisons and they rarely mention negatives
So I've been searching for something EXACTLY like that card you have at 17 minutes in that's four lanes of PCIE to four M.2 slots, one lane per slot. Every time I've looked I've always come up empty, the closest I'd find are adapters that wire up four lanes per M.2 slot (either x4 to one M.2 or x16 to four M.2) or use a single lane to drive two or four SATA M.2 slots instead of NVME. If you've got a link to where someone could buy THAT EXACT card you have there it would be very much appreciated!
Looks to me like you have a cyborg pc there that requires a very specific use case. I bought a NUC with an Intel N5095, 16GB RAM, 500GB M2 with Windows Pro 11 for under $200. It is an insane value.
I agree. This sits somewhere in the league which is slightly better than RPI with much faster I/O, but models with reasonable RAM are overpriced. If you have use cases that do not require cpu power or high I/O bandwidth, RPI might be better, if you have use cases that require some CPU power or RAM, this one is not great and seem overpriced. I guess it can do network stuff well and it's ok as a router (although hard to manage) running basic stuff such as mostly static web content, dns server, data logger. I bought one and it's a bit of mistake. For me it really just replaced RPI with something more reliable and I'm mostly using it just for cases above and some testing/tinkering with Linux and services.
Might be a nice way to update ye olde hp n36l microservers if used with a PCIe 2.0 raid/drive controller card that had the right miniSAS connector to plug into the HP SATA(SAS?) backplane, and use the nice HP drive caddies.
where is the stackable expandable home lab cluster solution with high speed interconnect bus - oculink, u2 pci, like mixblade, as an alternative to turing pi but x86 based: router - nas/p2p - audio/video - retro/cloudgaming - homeautomation - with a kybernetes type system you could swap the images you currently want to use, and keep a base cluster at 2 units, expanding as needed. only the base (router) unit needs multiple 2.5gbit and various io ports, all the upgrade compute units can be bare bone and smaller.should be standard now, as well as usb-c 3.2 2x2 20gb/s. which brings us to the second unit needed: a 4-5 bay SAS/SATA storage subsystem, 20gb/s and some slots for m2 sds for caching, not as a separate nas, but as a storage focused usb hub - again, due to the overhead of usb-c, the alternative bus would be pciie based, similar to oculink.
Which version of HA should you use ? I'm trying it on docker via a Raspberry 4 1go, but as I understood docker version isn't the best one for HA due to some limitations with adds on/integration.
Shit made me sad. Every single one of his Nas in that pile of shit he almost calls it. is better than all the backups I personally have .. my clients do get the near best though.
Duh, just remove the bracket at the end of the card. Or bend, or cut off, the bracket's tail. Two SATA, 2 USB, and 2 PCI-e drives for 6 total drives; almost a usable NAS.
@@bluesquadron593 with raspberry pi, you can use all kind of sensor/gpio. this thing only have pcie 2 4x that others dont have. oh you can put 4x gigabit port on that pcie and make it a router! yeah.. shitty cpu, better use those fanless router n5105 which has kinda same price with better hardware. most nuc can also have pcie slot with m2 - pcie converter.
Ok I'll tell him. The Tricorder is what the science officer used for testing environmentals. The talking device was simply named the communicator.
I have a 216 running pfSense like a champion and an 832 running TrueNAS. These things are incredible.
Because I'm an idiot and like to waste my money I've been buying all kinds of devices to start building a DIY or even unraid as an alternative to my Synology Diskstations which I think I've out-grown and I have just stumbled across Zimaboard and......using a PCI nvme adapter like you have show in your video to create some kind of frankenstine NAS that will offer out better performance for plex, which I let my family access remotely! I've ordered the 832 to expirement with! Great video :)
I am curious to see how much better they could do as retromachine (retropie/batocera kinda thing) with a device like this, compared to a R.pi 4B/400.
When they come out with an N5xxx or N6005-based unit with 16 GB of RAM and 2.5 GbE, then I'd be really interested for use as a Proxmox clustering setup...
Check out the ODROID H3 my man. That is what you're describing. Its $129 ($10 more than the ZIMA), it uses the N5105, has dual 2.5gbe, PCIe 3.0x4 (instead of 2.0 on the ZIMA), has M.2 NVMe, 2x Sata3, eMMC, way more I/O and can have up to 64gb DDR4 2933 RAM. You gotta add the RAM though. I have one running proxmox with pfsense, pihole, a proxy cache server, a deployment server for installing os's, observium for my network and a cloudflare tunnel. Its using about 10-12gb RAM of the 16gb I installed, only half the CPU and its also silent. I could run even more on it if I wanted to by increasing the RAM. Check it out if that's the sort of thing your looking for.
@@honestgoat Good recommendation. Imho zima board has few drawbacks (having 216):
- emmc storage is mostly useless unless you plan to use it strictly for networking
- There's nothing "hackable" about it. unless you want to add shutdown/reset buttons, you cant modify it
- 2gb of ram are not enough and cpu is sloooow (better than my rpi3b thou)
- It would be nicer to have enclosure, but if you fold cables and put ssd below, it's not that messy
- I bought fujitsu esprimo q956 for the same price. Upgraded ram and ssd, it has i5-6500t which is roughly 4-5 times faster and it consumes 5.5w idle and 8w with very light load (zimaboard uses 2.5w idle and 7.5w at full load). Having much faster PC which consumes 6w idle more makes much more sense for me, it can be used as desktop, it can run many docker containers with php (for nextcloud, image gallery, ...) whereas zimaboard can't resize images and generate thumbnails fast enough.
For me it's a great RPI replacement with faster I/O, better reliability, no GPIO or wifi, but higher models do not make sense imho, there are better alternatives for 200USD/EUR.
And problem is that I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't know which devices are on the market and what exactly I need. Sadly youtube reviews are not objective - there are no comparisons and they rarely mention negatives
@@honestgoat I will for sure check out the ODROID H3m, im running a very similar setup to what you mentioned.
So I've been searching for something EXACTLY like that card you have at 17 minutes in that's four lanes of PCIE to four M.2 slots, one lane per slot. Every time I've looked I've always come up empty, the closest I'd find are adapters that wire up four lanes per M.2 slot (either x4 to one M.2 or x16 to four M.2) or use a single lane to drive two or four SATA M.2 slots instead of NVME. If you've got a link to where someone could buy THAT EXACT card you have there it would be very much appreciated!
I don't believe seagulls seasonally migrate... Their noise is suspiciously absent. LoL.
4:05 it begins
4:19 crescendo
In theory you could use that thing as a plex media server and connect it to an external qnap RAID case. ^^
Looks to me like you have a cyborg pc there that requires a very specific use case. I bought a NUC with an Intel N5095, 16GB RAM, 500GB M2 with Windows Pro 11 for under $200. It is an insane value.
I agree. This sits somewhere in the league which is slightly better than RPI with much faster I/O, but models with reasonable RAM are overpriced. If you have use cases that do not require cpu power or high I/O bandwidth, RPI might be better, if you have use cases that require some CPU power or RAM, this one is not great and seem overpriced. I guess it can do network stuff well and it's ok as a router (although hard to manage) running basic stuff such as mostly static web content, dns server, data logger.
I bought one and it's a bit of mistake. For me it really just replaced RPI with something more reliable and I'm mostly using it just for cases above and some testing/tinkering with Linux and services.
Intro music: soothing. Transition music: obnoxious.
Get into the zone! Auto Zone.
I'm thinking of throwing dietpi on the 2GB RAM model. I gotta free ye olde port 53 on my unraid server 😀
A second version needs POE!
Awesome video you gained a subscriber ❤
Where does it ship from? China?
A pcie riser cable would solve the clearance issue
In regard to the PCI slot. Can't you just use a PCI- e riser cable. They cost what £20, then you can use whatever PCI-e card you want.
Might be a nice way to update ye olde hp n36l microservers if used with a PCIe 2.0 raid/drive controller card that had the right miniSAS connector to plug into the HP SATA(SAS?) backplane, and use the nice HP drive caddies.
Can you provide the link to M.2 NVME PCI expansion card you mentioned in the video @17:03. thx! Looks cool.
You could also just Dremel down the backplate on PCIE cards
or just unscrew the backplate from the card to take it off
The chips in the zima are long in the tooth now and well overdue an update to Alder-Lake N-series
Does it support pci-e video cards and what is a limitation?
'Not upgradable' simply means it's just brand new E waste.
where is the stackable expandable home lab cluster solution with high speed interconnect bus - oculink, u2 pci, like mixblade, as an alternative to turing pi but x86 based: router - nas/p2p - audio/video - retro/cloudgaming - homeautomation - with a kybernetes type system you could swap the images you currently want to use, and keep a base cluster at 2 units, expanding as needed. only the base (router) unit needs multiple 2.5gbit and various io ports, all the upgrade compute units can be bare bone and smaller.should be standard now, as well as usb-c 3.2 2x2 20gb/s. which brings us to the second unit needed: a 4-5 bay SAS/SATA storage subsystem, 20gb/s and some slots for m2 sds for caching, not as a separate nas, but as a storage focused usb hub - again, due to the overhead of usb-c, the alternative bus would be pciie based, similar to oculink.
Superb
that quad N3450 celeron is weaker that an 11 years old pentium dual core 2020M that was weaker even then.
Can you run home assistant on it?
I don’t see why you wouldn’t.
Yes
Which version of HA should you use ?
I'm trying it on docker via a Raspberry 4 1go, but as I understood docker version isn't the best one for HA due to some limitations with adds on/integration.
@@MoviesFlaFla The regular os version.
Lack of performance metrics is killing me
“crayon friendly”
Shit made me sad. Every single one of his Nas in that pile of shit he almost calls it. is better than all the backups I personally have .. my clients do get the near best though.
Duh, just remove the bracket at the end of the card. Or bend, or cut off, the bracket's tail. Two SATA, 2 USB, and 2 PCI-e drives for 6 total drives; almost a usable NAS.
This thing is overpriced for the specs. Just get an ODROID H3.
expensive as hell, better buy beelink u59 pro instead.
Expendability. This is in between a raspberry pi and a nuc. Beelink is a nuc.
@@bluesquadron593 with raspberry pi, you can use all kind of sensor/gpio. this thing only have pcie 2 4x that others dont have. oh you can put 4x gigabit port on that pcie and make it a router! yeah.. shitty cpu, better use those fanless router n5105 which has kinda same price with better hardware. most nuc can also have pcie slot with m2 - pcie converter.
No PCIe, and seems to be more expensive. Better CPU though.