Is this the future of x86 Single Board Computers? - ZimaBlade

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Introducing the ZimaBlade, an affordable, low power, single board computer that's great for a home servers, homelabs, tinkering, NAS, retro gaming, or even a dual boot desktop system like me. We'll take a look at how it compares to the ZimaBoard, the previous device from Ice Whale.
ZimaBlade on CrowdSupply: bit.ly/3PeSpxv
ZimaBlade Official Site: bit.ly/3tOlpUx
Disclosures:
- I was not paid
- Ice Whale provided ZimaBlades and accessories for testing
- I bought everything else with my own money
Video Notes: technotim.live/posts/zimablade-review/
ZimaBlade Accessories:
- 10g NIC: amzn.to/47aLJXl
- Quad 2.5g NIC: amzn.to/3sl2Bf1
- 4 Port USB Card: amzn.to/3FFIzPr
- WiFi 6 PCIe: amzn.to/3sfwLQY
- PCIe SATA Expansion: amzn.to/3sbNdlj
- SAMSUNG SSDs: amzn.to/3Sf5bxU
- 8GB SODIMM RAM: amzn.to/40iXUiw
- Anker USB C Hub: amzn.to/49tQCwL
- Slim Cat6 Cables: amzn.to/45NVj1e
- 2.5 to 3.5 Bracket: amzn.to/3s6q7fZ
Mentioned:
- My NEW Ultimate Desk & Setup Tour 2023!: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gYgaxdUAAS0.html
- 20 Home Server Projects You Can Start TODAY - CasaOS + ZimaBoard: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-La3NJZtI5OE.html
- The Best Way to Dual Boot Windows and Ubuntu: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CWQMYN12QD0.html
- Walkman Ad: archive.org/details/SonyAudioCatalog80s/page/n31/mode/2up?view=theater
Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/technotim
Sponsor me on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/timothystewart6
Subscribe on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/technotim
Become a RU-vid member: ru-vid.com/show-UCOk-gHyjcWZNj3Br4oxwh0Ajoin
Merch Shop: l.technotim.live/shop
Gear Recommendations: l.technotim.live/gear
Get Help in Our Discord Community: l.technotim.live/discord
2nd channel: www.youtube.com/@TechnoTimTalks
(Affiliate links may be included in this description. I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.)
00:00 - What is the ZimaBlade?
00:48 - Unbox Experience
01:19 - Hardware Specs
02:34 - PCI Express Slot
03:16 - First Boot Experience
04:46 - Build a NAS, or Not
05:18 - My Workbench Testing System
05:55 - Testing Power, CPU, and GPU on Windows
06:49 - Testing Power, CPU, and GPU on Linux
07:49 - Power
09:14 - LEDs
09:46 - Power Button
10:08 - PCB Color
10:31 - Printables?
10:56 - My Thoughts
Thank you for watching!

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31 окт 2023

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Комментарии : 95

@JeffGeerling 9 месяцев назад

LEDs are often overlooked; just having one for "I'm on" and another for "I'm doing something" saves so much frustration. It should always be visible even in a case. Maybe you could just drill a hole in the power LED spot ;)

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Agreed! I just might have to take a drill to it! 😅

@conm9891 9 месяцев назад

Speak of the devil. I kept restarting my proxmox server because the pc and motherboard have no led indicators, that would have showed it was booting but not displaying anything yet. I finally found out after frustration and walking away only to come back for it to be booted properly on its own. Btw Jeff if you read this, what is your backround education? I know u mention your dad is like an RF engineer but do u have a backround? Degree? I assume u went to college but im juat curious what you did before I found you on youtube.

@rustamhajiyev 9 месяцев назад

Unrelated: is it possible to make a wish in comments between two greatest tech youtubers? 🤔😁 Let me try :) A wish is loading... done :) Ok, once it comes true, I'll let you know 😅

@oscarcharliezulu 7 месяцев назад

Yep, in the ‘olden days’ the drive light was how I knew my process was running !

@AlbusRegis 9 месяцев назад

This device could be a great raspberry pi alternative for hosting something like a NUT server or as a remote management tool, given how expensive pies have become over time. Also, the "Blade" part of the name and the placement of the pci slot make me think that in the future they may also release some kind of board to plug several of these into and make a cluster.

@johnjbateman 9 месяцев назад

Love the new office in your background. Looks super clean and techie!

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Yay, thank you!

@techaddressed 9 месяцев назад

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought they look like a Walkman!

@Randoneering 9 месяцев назад

Hum. Maybe I'll go this route for pi replacements. Great vid as always. Audio quality is superb!

@ronm6585 9 месяцев назад

Thanks Tim.

@PaoloDenti 8 месяцев назад

I am using, with the zimaboard, poe splitters 12V/2A (powered by a ubiquiti edgeswitch 24ports poe), they work perfect. Thanks for the presentation, i just ordered the cluster of 3; with an nvme it is the perfect solution for a home lab k8s cluster, the 8gb was undersized (and i will run them with the poe splitter instead of those clumsy power adapters)

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Differences: ZimaBlade * CPU Intel Celeron J3455 or Dual core * 1 NIC, 1 Gbe * RAM slot, DDR3 up to 16 GB * 1 USB A 3.0 port * 1 USB C port (data + power + display) * Removable case * Can be installed in a stand ZimaBoard: * CPU Intel Celeron N3350 or N3450 * 2 NIC, 1 Gbe * RAM soldered, DDR4 2/4/8 GB * 1 USB A 3.0 port * No case, body is case * Cannot be installed in a stand

@MattCollingridge 8 месяцев назад

I'd love to see something like this with a socket. It would be great to use some of the old CPUs I have sitting around

@TeaBagginsMcGee 21 день назад

i have that same no name power adapter. I found it depended on the usb-c cable i used to get the blade to work. I broke down and got the recommended power adapter. My only regret was not buying the quad core version when it was in kickstarter.

@conm9891 9 месяцев назад

All about that light mode pcb, dark mode everything else. Thanks Tim. Keep up the content buddy.

@valid_ 9 месяцев назад

Looks cool. Would ideally make a great bare metal proxmox backup server with that NAS kit.

@Genetixxxxxxxxx 6 месяцев назад

I really love the white mode dev board!

@ChiMickE 9 месяцев назад

Very nice overview of the device. Thank you! I have a ZimaBoard already (used as a home server) and was wondering if it made sense to add a ZimaBlade to my collection or not. I had hoped that your video went into comparing the two, because of the title that you gave it, but other than that it's cheaper (and removable memory) I missed this comparison.

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Thank you and sorry for the confusion! I've created a pinned comment with the differences listed!

@markx6288 9 месяцев назад

Thanks Tim! It has now be zero days since my last tech purchase. ha

@DigitalSpaceport 9 месяцев назад

White PCB FTW! Also would like to see a 2.5Gbit NIC on the new Zblades. Great video!

@wcg66 9 месяцев назад

Another thing to note is that 16 GB DDR sodimm aren’t cheap (8 GB are, however). If want 16 GB, it makes sense to go with the package that includes both the owner supply and ram. I also wonder if the USB C power problem is due to the cable not supporting 12V? All USB C cables are different and you have to order a “charge and sync” style cable. Even then, who knows?

@hzr1833 3 месяца назад

No I think the product name, "ZimaBlade" is a reference to the episode of Love Death and Robot "Zima Blue" in the first season. We can also see the icons but in another order (love, robots, death instead of Love death robots) and in a different form. The board itself is also a good reference to the character of the story (no spoil).

@astacc 9 месяцев назад

Good to hear that they intend to deal with that power supply issue. When I first found out about it I decided against buying it, will consider it later when fully released and hopefully with proper PD support

@udeth36 Месяц назад

is this still a problem for today version??

@IHighscoredYourGirl 8 месяцев назад

wow, what a neat device.

@Soupie62 4 месяца назад

Another potential Cyberdeck brain! Personally, I'd prefer a wider, flatter version - in order to better fit it under a keyboard.

@ChrisRider 4 месяца назад

My pre-order finally arrived. Curious if you are still using it 4 months later and what is it used for? I have a new device and no clear purpose for it yet. (It lives with a lot of other devices :) ). I also assume that I have a final product. Still no power leds, ethernet leds, or power switch.

@orleiv 5 месяцев назад

So… I know you e been on a quest for a low powered GPU to add into your server? Would it be able to power a 1050ti ( which was the max gpu supported on zimmaboard via pcie) no external power and virtualise this with proxmox to create a remote batocera VM on proxmox, just out of curiosity? As I would be interested doing this for the low power consumption… at the moment ive got a N100 on the way and planning on just using the standard 730 graphics but think this would possible increase? I know you share the concern on power consumption and seem to have answer most of the questions ive been having recently through previous videos, love your mind set 💪🏼

@7MBoosted 9 месяцев назад

Which 4 port 2.5 nic was that?

@BrianThomas 9 месяцев назад

Great video. So, what would you think would be better for a general-purpose home server? The Zima board, Zimablade, or the Beelink S12?

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

It really depends on a few things: Do you need a PCIe slot? Do you need to tinker with different types of hardware setups? If no, I would go with a mini PC unless you need maximum flexibility or want to build with something unique like this.

@howardleen4182 9 месяцев назад

Could you use the zimablade to set up a dev, QA, uat and production environment with a ci/cd pipeline connected across the environments and load balancing for the uat and prod environments for website and Web application development? I'm not sure if there's enough cores. I would love to find up to date documentation or videos on how to do the above.

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

It certainly could depending on the workloads and what your CI/CD pipeline is actually doing (compiling code / applying k8s manifests / etc...)

@taurolyon 9 месяцев назад

Great video. It reminds me of my RockPro64 boards on the ARM platform. Does the NIC have a boot rom?

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Thank you! It does! I just tested it out last night!

@florianborkenhagen9434 8 месяцев назад

If u put it on the side u can test ur cards verticaly :)

@Zedris 9 месяцев назад

I ordered but i canceled my order after researching a 2 it does not give enough amps for 2 hdds to start up/on load to be an effective mini nas format device so the caddy case is cool and the main reason i wanted it but kind of misleading if big storage hard drives both loading up can cause them to loose power or powercycle which they only mention in passing in their discord.the usb power delivery charger being weird and that it can fry another device was also another negative for me.

@sinnful0 9 месяцев назад

casaos in my intro to linux and docker. im use to running everything on windows

@MIDNITE69 9 месяцев назад

Bummed the PCB won't be white in the final production units. ;_;

@andibiront2316 9 месяцев назад

I do like these boards, but as someone who has 72c/144t and 1TB in compute for his homelab, I never found a use for them. J3455 is old, 1 DDR3 SODIMM only. You can buy an N100 with 16GB RAM and 512GB NVMe for U$S145. Would it be too expensive to make a ZimaBlade with N300 with DDR4 or DDR5? I understand that N300 MSRP is U$S300, but N100 MSRP is U$S128 and there are complete systems with N100/16GB for ~125

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

I hear you, but cost needs to be cut from somewhere, especially on something as custom as this. I found a few scenarios where this excels (as is) even though I have a pretty decent homelab too 😅

@franklinzhou9298 9 месяцев назад

It's more fair to compare it with a fanless system, which brings it up to $150 before RAM and storage and $300 fully loaded with 32GB DDR5 and 1TB. Zima projects are unfortunately stuck competing between ESP and Pi clones for low-power hardware projects and x86 mini PCs for everything else. Their stuff might have made more sense before alder lake, but the E cores are a big step up in performance. I'm sure there's a niche for them, but I can't find it in my homelab.

@AdHdEntertainmentLLC 9 месяцев назад

I pre-ordered mine month ago. I wish I could get a review model for my channel but I can wait til Jan.

@FlexibleToast 9 месяцев назад

Limited to 16GB RAM and only 1G ethernet means something like the Proxmox HA Cluster it claims to do will be very limited. Just double those critical pieces to 32GB and 2.5G would be massive improvements for homelab stuff.

@Blubberland 9 месяцев назад

It´s not even 80$ man… It´s still way better than an Rpi5, which is way more expensive, when included the necessity to make it useful. Still wouldn‘t buy it. The Power supply thing is absolute no go.

@FlexibleToast 9 месяцев назад

@Blubberland yeah, it's so nearly perfect for a small cluster. I'm still looking for that goldilocks device.

@minifig404 9 месяцев назад

12V is not actually one of the common presets for USB-C PD, so it's typical that you couldn't find an existing PD power source for that specific mode. USB-PD favors 9V and 15V. It'd be really nice if more devices allowed more flexibility around input voltages, but can't have it all, I guess.

@ftamas88 9 месяцев назад

It must be a US thing then. Here in EU all my PD 3.1 & 3.0 chargers does support the 12v too. (I believe it was one of the earlier QuickCharge standard too) 😮

@tonysofla 3 месяца назад

It's hard to find a USB-C power brick that breaks the rules and start at 12v, as this board don't use a power negotiations ic, though it only cost 4cents from like WCH

@darthkielbasa 9 месяцев назад

Excellent video, Tim. I really enjoy your channel. To combat the lack of power switch for my zimaboard I picked up a POE splitter. It works great and I’m only managing one cable to the device. Perfect for my test bench to keep things tidy. Credit to @hardwarehaven for the suggestion.

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Thanks! Yeah, I have the splitter too for my zimaboard!

@frankboyer1490 9 месяцев назад

This looks really interesting for a low cost Plex Server. I'm really curious about how many streams the quad-core can do.

@FlexibleToast 9 месяцев назад

They seem to not be saying which model of Celeron it is, but if it has Quicksync it will handle plenty of streams. As long as you don't want a ton of drives and it has quicksync, this would be basically perfect for that application.

@frankboyer1490 9 месяцев назад

@@FlexibleToast It's a J3455 with Quicksync. The drives thing isn't an issue for me but briefly looking at some testing info, a used HP mini would be a better buy for my use case even if it's more expensive.

@FlexibleToast 9 месяцев назад

@frankboyer1490 with an ancient version of quicksync that might not produce satisfactory results. I don't think this board actually would be an ideal Plex server.

@luisliz 6 месяцев назад

The iMac running windows with a linux logo was very confusing. lmao

@nakorau 28 дней назад

anyone tried usb 12 volt qc3/4 with this ?

@autohmae 8 месяцев назад

What is cool about your video: we get to see someone compare powerusage under Windows and Linux, we hardly get direct comparisons like that. And Linux even did slightly better, interesting !

@jorgegomez374 9 месяцев назад

Will It runs unraid? Great vid

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Seems to, it exceeds their minimum requirements.

@jorgegomez374 9 месяцев назад

@@TechnoTim all ready bought mine waiting for It. What to replace my rPi. Whit it and add unRAID. Thanks

@jakereed7180 8 месяцев назад

Light mode pcb, dark mode screen 👍

@juansolo1617 7 месяцев назад

Pre-orders are looking like a Ryzen mini PC (Nuc size) with 8 cores costs around the same price (sometimes less). More cores, more connectivity, better GPU.

@HAL9000system 3 месяца назад

is not possible to name it "SBC". It have 2 boards, the main one plus the RAM DIMM

@shanent5793 9 месяцев назад

If it's "open hardware" then where are the design files? What's the BoM cost?

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Sorry, didn't say "open source hardware", I said "open hardware" meaning that it's open and not locked down with some vendor's firmware.

@shanent5793 9 месяцев назад

@@TechnoTim I think you mean its bootloader is unlocked. OHW and OSHW are synonymous

@DominiqueComte 8 месяцев назад

isn't it easier to find a gold bar on the street than it is to find a 16 Gb stick of DDR3 at a price lower than a small PC ?

@BadMax02_VR 9 месяцев назад

It says right there at 9:56: PWR_SW which i would guess is a Power Switch? :D

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

Look again, it says RST_SW which is reset 😅

@BadMax02_VR 9 месяцев назад

@@TechnoTim no i mean the 2 pins next to it :D Inbetweed the sata port and the 4 pins group its right inbetween there where it says PWR_SW :p

@squalazzo 9 месяцев назад

so, a "standard" says all power deliveries are equal, but some are more equal than others... right...

@FlexibleToast 9 месяцев назад

Welcome to USB standards.

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

🤣 Which standard?? 🤣

@Blubberland 9 месяцев назад

@@TechnoTim wish you would have been more critical about that topic.

@kailisse3267 9 месяцев назад

No option for PoE? Seriously? Why? Showstopper for me.

@FlexibleToast 9 месяцев назад

You would need PoE++ to provide enough power to it. It's low power, but not PoE low.

@AdHdEntertainmentLLC 9 месяцев назад

The white PCB pops in that case.

@javierdonoso88 9 месяцев назад

I love he is using windows in a Mac!

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

And soon linux!

@BruinBearDoc 5 месяцев назад

I bought MANY months ago, promised to ship months ago ,never got it, and they made themselves a VERY unreliable supplier.

@driftlensmedia 9 месяцев назад

light mode looks better

@kieranjervis8590 9 месяцев назад

You are like the Computers version of KLEAN.

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

I don't know who KLEAN is, hopefully that's a good thing?

@kieranjervis8590 9 месяцев назад

haha. Yeah you two look alike thats all, Love the vids bro.@@TechnoTim

@Pytte 9 месяцев назад

I dunno what to put on my screens.. oh I know.. btop

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

nailed it

@djKenpLan09 9 месяцев назад

First!

@third-partysites3923 9 месяцев назад

Second

@rudypieplenbosch6752 9 месяцев назад

I don't like these crappy intel procs in these kind of devices.

@TechnoTim 9 месяцев назад

I can understand, they are cheap though and great for what I use it for.

@Ginto_O 8 месяцев назад

In this video you said "go a long way" 3 times