ZimaBoard 2 1664 x86 Home Server, Quad-Core N150, 16GB DDR5, 64GB eMMC, PCIe 3.0×4 Expansion, Dual 2.5GbE & Dual SATA3.0, Low-Power 24/7 Fanless, All-in-One NAS/Router/Docker/Home Lab with ZimaOS

I bought my Zimaboard 232 for a pfSense project, to build a dedicated site-to-site Wireguard tunnel between my data core pfSense router and a new remote node. As a long-time Raspberry Pi builder, I was really excited by the possibilities of the Zimaboard. My first impression was that the coolness factor is just off the charts. The heatsinks look sweet. No fans. Dual NICs, PCIe slot, how cool is this! The chipset even supports AES-NI CPU crypto, which is really important for VPN routers (even though I don’t get to take advantage of that with Wireguard). The possibilities are vast with this thing. For my application, I added rubber feet to stabilize it on a flat surface. The Zimaboard has enough weight to make it stick to a desktop nicely with the added feet. I’m a bit surprised this wasn’t included with it. Installing pfSense was exactly as it usually is (F11 key to enter boot device selection to boot from USB). It went quick with no surprises. It assigned the two NICs to re0 and re1, left and right ports on the rear of the Zimaboard respectively. I have read online that pfSense sometimes has issues with Realtek NICs, but after 3 weeks of heavy traffic utilization, I have had zero glitches. I have not had to disable hardware checksum offload in pfSense. Solid. I have pushed close to 10 TB of data through my Wireguard tunnel in the last 3 weeks, and it hasn’t missed a beat. The processor keeps up with Wireguard throughput up to around 150mbps very well. I will attach a screenshot of the pfSense dashboard that was captured after a large file transfer had been running through the Wireguard tunnel for about 10 minutes at around 80mbps. This is perfect for my application. It also comes with some very cool stickers, which I just love. Nice touch. Rock solid on pfSense so far. So cool!

I bought the ZimaBoard as a small server for my barn which lacks heating and air conditioning. The ZimaBoard's big heatsink looks perfect, and removes the possibility of a fan failing in the harsh environment. It hasn't faced summertime heat yet, but it runs cool so far. I'll update this review if something goes wrong when the hot weather arrives. It seems like the ZimaBoard would be comparable to the Raspberry Pi 4, but as much as I love the RasPi and the company's mission, the ZimaBoard is really in a different league. It seems snappy, and my benchmarking confirms it: The ZimaBoard is much faster, and it runs amd64 architecture which is nice. It has a bigger footprint than the RasPi, but it's still tiny. Quality is far nicer than I expected at this price point, and it feels heavy and solid. So far so good. It appears that this will be a great little headless server, and might even have enough grunt for desktop use. UPDATE 07/23/2023: It's summertime and my ZimaBoard has stayed up without a hitch, even in an environment without air conditioning. This week I moved 7TB of data through it with rsync, which caused a continuous load of about 35% CPU usage for 24 hours, and it handled the task, no problem. And this was during a heat wave with 100°F (~38°C) daytime temps. Once the CPU nears 50°C it throttles down, keeping temps in check, and without much performance hit in my case. Turns out, the ZimaBoard is as rugged as it looks, and the passive heatsink does its job, even in the heat. UPDATE 08/05/2024 It's been two snowy winters and two very hot summers and my Zimaboard has been rock solid, all without climate control. Aside from reboots from updates or the occasional power outage, it's been up and available, no hiccups, no drama. During an especially frigid stretch last winter I threw a shoebox over it for a couple days, but I doubt if it even needed it. I always know that when I SSH over to it, it'll answer. Couldn't be happier.

Hi. M̶y̶ b̶r̶a̶n̶d̶ n̶e̶w̶ Z̶i̶m̶a̶B̶o̶a̶r̶d̶ 8̶3̶2̶ j̶u̶s̶t̶ l̶a̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ a̶t̶ m̶y̶ d̶o̶o̶r̶s̶t̶e̶p̶ a̶n̶d̶ o̶n̶e̶ c̶r̶u̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ p̶a̶r̶t̶ (̶t̶o̶ m̶e̶)̶ i̶s̶ m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶:̶ t̶h̶e̶ S̶A̶T̶A̶ c̶a̶b̶l̶e̶. T̶h̶e̶ p̶a̶c̶k̶a̶g̶e̶ w̶a̶s̶ n̶o̶t̶ i̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶ a̶n̶y̶ b̶a̶g̶ o̶r̶ w̶r̶a̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶, j̶u̶s̶t̶ t̶h̶e̶ O̶E̶M̶ c̶a̶r̶d̶b̶o̶a̶r̶d̶ b̶o̶x̶. N̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ t̶h̶a̶t̶ h̶e̶l̶p̶s̶ p̶r̶o̶t̶e̶c̶t̶ t̶h̶e̶ c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ f̶r̶o̶m̶ "c̶u̶r̶i̶o̶u̶s̶" p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ w̶i̶t̶h̶ i̶t̶c̶h̶y̶ h̶a̶n̶d̶s̶. W̶i̶t̶h̶o̶u̶t̶ t̶h̶a̶t̶ c̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ I̶ a̶m̶ a̶f̶r̶a̶i̶d̶ I̶ w̶i̶l̶l̶ h̶a̶v̶e̶ t̶o̶ r̶e̶t̶u̶r̶n̶ t̶h̶e̶ i̶t̶e̶m̶, b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ I̶ w̶o̶n̶t̶ b̶e̶ a̶b̶l̶e̶ t̶o̶ u̶s̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶ d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ w̶i̶t̶h̶o̶u̶t̶ t̶h̶a̶t̶ c̶a̶b̶l̶e̶. W̶h̶a̶t̶ a̶ n̶u̶i̶s̶a̶n̶c̶e̶!̶ Photo attached. ****-----**** Please disregard above comment, watching a video on YouTube I saw where to look for the F...ine cable. Duuhh, Sorry. ****-----**** Reading the comments of Xbox Gamertag (3 stars only), and in the second comment he says: "2. Sometimes Zima gets into a weird state and will not power on. Plugging in the power cable makes the power light flash once and turn off. To fix this you have to disassemble the case and unplug the CMOS battery which is thankfully socketed, then power it up. I've observed this happens the most when any kind of sleep or hibernation feature turns on. If you didn't know this, you'd just think it was dead and return it as junk. Be sure to disable all sleep, hibernation, and power saving OS options to avoid this." That is happening to my ZB and was this close to return the item. I will hold to it for a couple more weeks and see if I can withstand the hassle. Going from 2 to 3 stars. I will update my comment in case there is something worth mentioning. 3 photos attached showing acrylic base removed and Brass Spacers Standoffs added. UPDATE (SEP 7, 2024): I installed pfSense as my personal firewall and router, working great so far. Nothing to complain about. Zero issues.

Great device, but they really need to work on documentation, especially first time startup is very skechy. Other that documentation issue it works great. For standard setups only use one of the ethernet ports unless you combine them with software first (if you try it without combining them first it really confuses windows apps!).

Great little SBC turned into firewall. Only wish for easy OS switching for more fun.

You can literally set up an entire home lab with Proxmox, pfSense/OPNsense, and an Ubuntu VM on this board, and still have room to grow.

Have had this unit for the better part of a year and it works great. Initially I had issues with the CasaOS software that came with it. Couldn't get any support, which was very disappointing and cost me a lot of wasted time trying to figure out myself. About a week or so later a software update came out which fixed the issue. Since then, I have enjoyed the unit. One gripe I have is when using the SATA connector, it won't recognize existing data on the drive. So it needs to be blank or it needs to be reformatted. With the USB ports, this is not an issue. Otherwise, the unit has fast data transfers. Also, I recommend using a third party software like Tailscale to be able to securely access the connected drives remotely. This setup is far superior to the Synology I had before it. Its also very quiet.

A great homelab or NAS setup for those interested in running a headless setup! The ZimaOS web interface is very easy to use and allows for a much simpler experience for adding apps and other services than your typical linux based homelab. The app store has a nice selection of apps and utilities to choose from in the realm of network solutions, file sharing, media servers, etc. I also appreciated the ease of setting up file sharing compared to linux based/command line alternatives. My only issue with the product was that despite having a miniDP output, the ZIMA OS does not natively support a display. In my case, I purchased this device to partially serve the purpose of a NAS as well as power a display for my home automation system via touchscreen display. Ultimately, I had to abandon the ZimaOS and install a linux distrobution instead to have it meet my needs. That said, it was also very simple and the hardware did very well accommodating multiple different distros and touch screen capabilities. I do however wish that the product description made clearer that despite the hardware having a display output, the Zima OS does not support an external display.