Zima Board – Hackable Single Board Server | Hacker News Reader

Zima Board – Hackable Single Board Server

zimaboard.com

42 pointsta864550 comments

Oh come on, not again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37819114

In short: this is just re-packaged underperforming SoC overstock and neither special nor worth the money. The same money buys better things. A little bit extra money buys order of magnitude better things.

Please post some links for the magnitude better things of the same features (no fan, small systems, comparable ports, Intel)

I mean, it's nice to have the ports, but you have externally power the drives because the PSU is 3A, so one for the computer and that leaves 2A. Most HDDs need 2A to spin up so you can only have one drive. So no redundancy.

If I was to make a NAS (which is what I would be interested in) I would pay triple for something like the NAS killer 6 [3]. To be fair the Zimacube might be more of a challenge to this (but its not out yet).

I think its interesting though for a small, fanless sever. But (understandably, it's cheap) if you wanted something more, an extra $200 would be get you much more. I guess it depends on what you are looking for.

As for alternatives 1: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/uptimelab/compute-blade ($60 + need pi) 2: Zimablade (lol).

Here's a solid blog post on it: https://www.martinrowan.co.uk/2023/01/is-a-zimaboard-the-rig...

[1]: https://shop.zimaboard.com/collections/all-products/products...

[2]: https://versus.com/en/intel-celeron-n3350-vs-intel-celeron-n...

[3]: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-6-0-ddr4-...

So Kickstarter compute blade which is not shipping yet, zimacube which is not shipping yet, or build-your-own for more money which is not really the same category as the zimaboard. Those are not great alternatives today.

Zimaboard came out of kickstarter a year and a half ago. Patience is a virtue.

Another reason why there aren't that many alternatives is that you can't use it for that much. It's like buying a car that can carry 50 kg. Great if thats your use case, but if you want anything more, there's no point. I can't really use it as a NAS, firewall etc. I think it certainly has uses, they are just ones that the average NAS/server people can do with a stronger server that can also do nextcloud, pi-hole, etc, in one, rather than have a device for each (which is way more costly).

Already did, click the link.

Better yet: any NUC will be better, except maybe the first three generations lowest end models if you want to go that far back.

None of the Qotom devices in the same price range support connecting 2 SSDs. My current NUC also doesn't.

Odd, what devices do you have? All of the NUCs, Toptons, Kingvoys, Qotoms support at least two disks, most more.

I've had a 832 for almost a year now and it's great, but I would not buy another one. You can find small form factor, business class PCs all day long on your market place of choice for the same price with better hardware. Install Debian and CasaOS on them and you have the same functionality with much better performance and probably more options to upgrade down the road.

I planned to use the ZimaBoard as a small OpnSense platform. Sadly, the NICs are Broadcom which has an unhealthy tendency to fail in weird way when throughput is pushed (lucky enough that I have fiber Intarwebz, so Gig is not unreasonable). I am not alone, so it is not one-off. [1]

The solution is use an Intel NIC off the PCIe slot exposed by ZimaBoard, but there isn't a decent bracket to hold it. There is a 3D printable design [2] (unaffiliated), but ehhh, as been pointed out, used small business PCs are plentiful.

I went with a used Sophos SG115 rev.2 which uses Intel Pro/1000 NICs, which works splendidly.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ZimaBoard/comments/12gij2d/zimaboar... [2] https://www.printables.com/model/215289-zimaboard-wall-mount...

Agreed, I'd never ever buy a product that has a Broadcom NIC or any other networking equipment based on Broadcom NICs.

As an example, their 10G BCM53161 controllers have a power consumption of TWICE of the competing Realteks RTL8372.

However, the Zimaboard specs claim to be using Realtek 8111H. Maybe they changed the design recently?

Now, the 8111H also has a hell lot of issues, again recently with Linux Kernel 6.2, but it's nowhere as bad as the Broadcom stuff.

For maybe $2 more they could have used some PROVEN (aka old) Intel NIC instead.

(The recent Intel 2.5G I225-VI and 226-V ALSO have a bunch of problems/bugs, sigh)

In general, quality of NIC chips has gone down during the last 10 years. If you want something to be used for critical/stable networking, you really have to do some research.

Intel NICs have had similar problems. One of my circa 2010 servers had the NIC lock up in such a way that passthru traffic to the IPMI was blocked preventing remote management access. I drove 3.5 hours to the data center to power cycle the system. Investigation eventually turned up an errata for exactly that issue. Suffice it to say that I decommissioned that server as soon as I could.

> Intel NICs have had similar problems. One of my circa 2010 servers had the NIC lock up in such a way that passthru traffic to the IPMI was blocked preventing remote management access. I drove 3.5 hours to the data center to power cycle the system. Investigation eventually turned up an errata for exactly that issue. Suffice it to say that I decommissioned that server as soon as I could.

In the past life of being a SysAdmin, we strove for independent OOB NICs whenever possible specifically for this sort of edge case. And then used switched type PDUs (instead of just metered) so that remote power-cycling was possible for the eventuality that the IPMI controller had an OOM and no incantation of `ipmitool` would suffice (<caugh> iDRAC <caugh>).

Sounds like you weren't able to get all those nice things. Unfortunate. Been there.

In-Band passthru is a nightmare. Even if your NIC is good, it can cause all sorts of problems. It's okayish if it's done via an Ethernet bridge, but that seems to be the exception. On the ASRock Rack boards I have recently sourced you suddenly get a new PCIe root bridge, and (10G) NIC throughput goes down the drain.

> However, the Zimaboard specs claim to be using Realtek 8111H. Maybe they changed the design recently?

D'oh! You are absolutely right, I am not sure from where I got Broadcom for ZimaBoard. Probably because I conflate BCM and RTL as both being "bleh" quality (OK for light in-band management, but no serious workloads)? Weak excuse for the inaccuracy, though.

Well, if you pick a matching driver/kernel version, the 8111H work in a stable fashion. The hardware is mostly OK, the drivers are bad. You can even enable most offloading features without stuff exploding. On most distros, the 8111H works fine out of the box.

I still miss the times of Intel 82574L & co, where you had BOTH working hardware AND working drivers.

Interesting.

Apollo lake, 2xGB Ethernet, mini DisplayPort, 2xSATA, 2/4/8GB RAM, 32GB eMMC, passively cooled. 6W TDP.

Zima. I remember seeing that sign on Babylon 5.

Zima was also a fruity malt liquor beverage that was sort of popular in the 1990s.

https://vinepair.com/articles/ntk-zima/

I never had the privilege of tasting Zima.

B5 (a 90s sci-fi show) had a sign for Zima in it (and got no $ for it )

I'm surprised Zima hasn't made a permanent comeback. It's always remembered rather fondly by folks.

Not again, they use HN as advertising for their shitty scam board. Its supposed to have 32 Gigs MMC, mine only has 14 Gigs show up and the support ignores me.

China trash, buy something from a more reputable company.

They also used AI to create some cringe promo website that tried super hard to connect their "hacker board" with Cyberpunk 2077. Do not trust them!

Theirs "OS" is a shitty front-end for Docker that has zero concerns for security.

> They also used AI to create some cringe promo website that tried super hard to connect their "hacker board" with Cyberpunk 2077. Do not trust them!

I'm not sure how much of it is "AI" and how much is just terrible copywriting. The other posts on the blog are incoherent filler text.

https://www.zimaboard.com/blade/the-story-behind-zimablade/

This is probably a noob question, but i'm going to ask it anyway - what's the difference between Zima and Rpi (100$) and such (I know there are hardware differences, but do you really need intel quad core CPU for NAS?)

Depending on your use case. For example, I was using a RPi 4 with a large external drive to receive backups over ssh. Come to find out, the performance bottleneck was ssh encryption overhead -- ssh server is single threaded, so it only used one cpu core, and got about 20 MB/s instead of the expected > 100 MB/s I can get out of even a low end x86 board.

On the other hand, a RPi 4 was cheap enough that if you needed to work on someone's Windows box, you can plop one of these down to get them "back in business" real quick for browsing the internet, video streaming, email, etc.

Looks interesting. But there's no case to augment it? If you screw on a SSD and connect via sata, the cable loop sits on the end, ready to get snagged and pulled out?

Seems like a missed opportunity to not have power over Ethernet support?

the only thing i can think seeing this is "you should go back to your strip malls and drink your Zimas and Smirnoff Ices"

Just bought one recently. Waiting for it to arrive and replace a giant desktop tower with a passive cooled 6w tiny thing.

No affiliation whatsoever, just thought this looked like an interesting and affordable product.

Oh dear... this is the last thing I needed to see after payday!

Server, 200 $, 2 SATA ports.

Way too expensive for what it offers.

E-waste recycling.

This really irks me. We're calling a machine with a Celeron CPU a "server" now? And being expandable is now "hackable?"

> We're calling a machine with a Celeron CPU a "server" now?

What's wrong with that? A server can have any kind of CPU.

>What's wrong with that?

Functioning as a server is a use case. Labelling the desktop / embedded grade hardware as server grade is false marketing in my my opinion. Celeron is a desktop or embedded grade CPU (as per Intel's own classification).

>A server can have any kind of CPU.

You can use any kind of CPU to "serve." From a hardware point of view, there are categories of CPUs that are classified as server grade with specific feature sets. Intel Atom (C series) and Xeon are server grade (again per Intel's classification). The lines between Intel's server and desktop grade CPUs used to be very clear, however they are blurring over time. For example, new Core series CPUs support ECC memory which used to be a server specific feature however they still lack RAS features.

Xeons have support much more memory, have higher core counts, have ECC and RAS, support multi sockets, etc.

Just because “server” has the connotation of a 28+ core-each dual-Xeon setup does not mean that this isn’t a server. After all, a “server” just means a computer that serves content, and this qualifies. No one is recommending one put this processor in a data center, and, at the same time, no one is recommending I put a multi-thousand dollar Xeon in my NAS.

>a “server” just means a computer that serves content

From a software point of view, you are correct. You can use any machine you want for that use case.

It's one thing to say - "You can use this computer as a server / to serve content." It's something different to say "this is computer is a single board server" when it actually isn't.

I know I'm being pedantic but I work in Product for a server manufacturer. I'll stop now.

You’re correct, and maybe I was a bit harsh in my response. But there’s not really a good word for “a file store and a bit more” besides “server”.

This is a really fun argument we're having where the various parties don't agree on the definition of the thing they're arguing about.

They never labeled it as "server grade"...?

Straight from the copy on their website - "Zimaboard is a low cost single board server designed for makers and geeks like you." Or this one: "World’s First Hackable Single Board Server Starting at $119.9"

Calling it a server is not the same as saying server grade hardware.

Calling a piece of hardware a server is indeed the same as saying the hardware is server grade, whatever that may mean (if it doesn't meet the grade to be used for servers, whatever that grade might be, logically you shouldn't call it one). Otherwise, every computer is a server, making the term "server" extraneous. It isn't extraneous, though, therefore server and computer must not mean exactly the same thing.

One could also argue this isn't a server because it isn't serving anything, it's just a powered down computer in a cardboard box in a warehouse, waiting for you to order it and tell it what to do, like any other computer (maybe you want it to serve stuff, maybe not).

This is effectively a prescriptive vs descriptive language issue. And prescriptive side always loses, because the people adjust the word meaning for a reason.

The expected usage here is: This device goes under the desk / into some closet, runs headless, runs 24/7 and provides some services on the network. It's a server. That's how people use this word these days, RPi is a server device too. (See /r/selfhosted)

Fortunately, descriptivism doesn't "win" (what does that even mean in a discussion about both how things are and how they should be?), but if it did, the computer in question still wouldn't be called a server, because that isn't what most people would call it. Only the manufacturers and a select few techies would call it a server.

> The expected usage here is: This device goes under the desk / into some closet, runs headless, runs 24/7 and provides some services on the network.

The same is true of many configurations of home computers, yet the hardware isn't called* "server" hardware, and they aren't called* "servers" either, unless they're actually serving something. When you buy it at the store, it's just called a computer.

*: 'not called' as in, most people don't call it that, so descriptivist, and they shouldn't, so prescriptivist, too

Nowhere in that text does it say "server grade"

Not sure how they can given the CPU is roughly 4 generations old at this point and was underpowered when it was released way back then.

> Celeron CPU a "server" now

There's a long, rich history of low-power chips being used in home servers. It makes a lot of sense because for that type of application you want low power draw and low noise. Both of these are different requirements to the datacenter-based servers you seem more familiar with but nevertheless it is an entirely valid type of server.

For example, here[1] is an article about HP's use of Atom chips in their home media server.

I had one of their AMD Turion based MicroServers a few years later, which was significantly more powerful than an Atom but much less powerful than this Celeron. It still works fine as a backup/NAS server.

[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/528926/article-6705.html

[2] https://www.reboot-it.com.au/p/Networking/Servers/HP-ProLian...

>There's a long, rich history of low-power chips being used in home servers. It makes a lot of sense because for that type of application you want low power draw and low noise. Both of these are different requirements to the datacenter-based servers you seem more familiar with but nevertheless it is an entirely valid type of server.

I 100% agree with you. I'm not here saying "it's not a server unless it has more than 30 cores rabble rabble rabble." There's a spectrum of server hardware available ranging from stick-it-in-a-closet micro server to full fledge DC grade rack server.

An Atom (C series) is a server (albeit a microserver). I have no issue with this at all. Xeon D chipsets go all the way down to 2 cores, I still recognize it as a (micro)server. Both CPU families are labelled as servers by Intel (that's not to say Intel has the final say in what a server is or is not.)

Celerons lack the feature sets to be called a server from a pure hardware perspective.

I don't really see why Intel's opinion on this matters much.

The requirements for this are price and power efficiency, not any of the features that Intel likes to class as "server CPUs" (eg the remote management features). The only downside is the lack of ECC memory, but some Celerons support that, eg[1]. It's true this one doesn't but that seems the only downside.

[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/search/featurefi...

No ECC?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com