The Zimablade Is A Low-cost X86 SBC With A PCIe Slot & Retro Emu Support.
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- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2024
- In this Video we take a look at and test out the all new ZimaBlade X86 Single board computer that can be used a retro emulation PC, A Server, Cloud Backup, Desktop PC and More.
Powered by an Intel CPU this affordable X86 SBC Is actually pretty awesome.
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AS YOU KNOW: For that same $100, an HP/DELL/LENOVO Liter-Class Refurb will give us an i3/i5 with 8GB/16GB of DDR4(2x) and PCIe 3.0, plus SATA3 and M.2 NVMe(x4) and dual HDMI.
This X86 Zima SBC *would be justified as an embedded , 24/7 utility node, for home automation, hydroponics, print service, etc.
What is power consumption of these?
@@adamkoxxl go a pre-owned surface go 1.
@@adamkoxxl you wont break your bank acct bro
@@ultrasurfs i already use my old gaming laptop as a homelab server with proxmox. With gtx 1060 maxq and nvidia drivers on it draws around 24w idle and on noveau it was idling on 15w running home assistant, node red and mqtt server.
That's what I thought when running through the specs. There are enough old models out there that can outperform for the same price. It's got a beautiful form factor and it is genuinely affordable though.
Definitely for flashy looking and specific projects. Aka: Nerd bait.
Thanks for the shout out!!!
As a member of the Bato-Army, i need to see how bato as a frontend works on this board, with and without a gfx card attached.
I'm looking at possibly using this board as the "brains" of a retro handheld, or even my own personal arcade cab.
would love to see a follow up, seeing as no official documentation on bato and the zimablade is around, and would love your professional take!
Anytime I see a SBC or mini pc with a slot for a PCIE slot my eyes look like this 🤩!!
6:56 one thing to note is that this 1080p video is actually in AV1 format which is pretty recent and probably harder to decode than h264 (and i don't know for this particular cpu but it very likely don't have hardware accel for AV1 and certainly does have it for h264)
Yeah he could force it to h.264
I'd be happy to see any and all peripherals or cards you could make work in it. But as it stands I couldn't justify the cost vs the power it provides.
Once again, thank you for a wonderful overview.
Yes please test more with this, what I'd like to see that you don't ever do, is performance on snes and arcade etc with some of the really nice crt filters turned on in retro arch etc, , they do use a lot more system power so would be good to see how this handles them, the pi struggles with some.
Please 👍
Yes please on the gpu stuff, its the part of SBC's I enjoy.
I’d also like to see windows performance
For a home server, I would have still wanted ddr4 (or even 5) because the lower power consumption. Also, DDR3 is starting to become expensive for larger sizes because it is so old. The sweet spot for price is DDR4
A computer that looks like an old style cassette tape Walkman. Cool! Unfortunately the components inside are kinda 2005. So it would probably be used as a paper weight.
Literally my favorite youtuber. Keep up the good work!
This will be great for a personal NAS. I’ve seen in the promotional material for this a sort of case for two 3.5” HDDs. Running those in RAID0 with an external drive for backups would be ideal for me personally.
RAID0 offers no parity though, why for a NAS.
Love your videos man but every time you say "periph-ree-all" an angel cries
Same price as RPi 5, full-featured usb-c, embedded storage, SATA, pcie2x4 instead of x1, quicksync, i386 comparibility. Some random SBC just showing up the RPi with features everyone has been asking for since the first iteration
Yes eta prime with all point testing. We need a pi comparison.
Yea, I've been wanting you to do this!
Low cost is better than high performance. For most use cases, especially for a server you don't need CPU and memory speeds. I'm happy they went with the low-end CPU and DDR3.
@@Username-qx9gk You can't, in most European countries.
Seeing your twitter thumbnail reminds me we need a Bluetooth DC controller.
Stick a GPU in it, I want to see if it’s worth it.
The cpu is from 2016. And was bad when it was new. So no.
I feel like this would be great for streamers, you have your game running on your main PC and then you stick a PCIe capture card onto this and stream from it. Or at the very least it would be useful for V tubers since Vtubing is basically playing two games at once.
PCIE-fied tv stick.... his netbook cousins called from 2008 and wants him back, the RB pie5 is also making this feel so ancient.... hope the next thinggymajig is more recent... something like this but with built in 32gb dual channel 7500/8500mhz ddr5 ram and pcie5 external slot too...
That PCIe slot makes me wonder if this device would let you make one of the smallest, most efficient analog emulators possible. That is, what if you installed Batocera on it, put an R7 350X in the PCIe slot and then used a USMA SCART Adapter and a Retrotink RGB2COMP to connect to a CRT TV? How far could you push that setup at 240p? Dreamcast? PS2? GameCube?
I would honestly say that it won't get far when the cpu is so limited.
There's all kinds of x86 mini boards out there. While most do cost more than this, they vastly out power this thing. This thing is a waste of silicon. DDR3 single channel? I mean if you want to run a windows build or something, the thing is going to be so underpowered. If you're going to use Linux, you might as well just buy an arm based system. It would likely be much more powerful at the same price point. I mean they just announced raspberry pi 5. That will dominate the thing on arm unix space builds
Don't forget the CPU is a Celeron.
The lack of wifi and slower ram are kinda deal-breakers for this device but otherwise it's very reasonably priced
You have to try the new FSR 3 Frame Generation that is open source. 💪🏻💪🏻🔥🔥
I think the Intel iGPU is why it has better performance in that demo benchmark compared to the Pi.. Thats probably the only real benefit.. Had the board been Dual Channel it would likely do very well overall.
YES TRY A RETRO OS ON THIS BOARD , Im curious to see how well this board can run gamecube
Interesting. I like the look, very cyber punk. Strap the rx6400 and the other low consumption cards.
Terrible for Plex unfortunately… I was really hoping for a J4125 or higher, but I guess they got these chips super cheap from Intel. This would make an awesome little firewall if you got a spare pcie NIC laying around.
I hear you, but for the price, you cannot ask for more. They already doing DDR 3......
I bought a micro pc (like gmtech or chuwi larkbox) about the same price more then year ago. And it's got n5105 processor. Still awesome for a media pc
It will do hardware H.264/H.265/VP8/VP9 encoding 4k no issues, how is it bad for plex?
@@ionstorm66 I was wondering the same
@@Ibiky_Stern the N5105 is double the GPU of this J3455. Half the execution units. Read my other reply to find out why.
Would love to see Blitz 2k in MAME tried. That was always a tough game to be smooth.
Seems just like the zimaboard, only very slightly different processors - whatever they source cheap. And they updated the looks to be more stylish. The first version hit the market to almost no publicity, after a long Covid delay, although they claim to have sold quite a few since.
I have a zimaboard, with 2 1TB SSDs in mirror mode running my nextcloud. I can access it from anywhere via a free cloudflare tunnel, works great for that.
I have this zimablade,on order too, the NAS kit. I love these little single computers for dedicated single use applications.
Could you do a video on your best to emulate Sega Saturn these days?
Where is the fan? All that power but no fan?
seems like it's pretty unpopular
Was interested in this board until i herd Celeron possessor 😂
I would love to see this connected to the arc a380. Would be interesting to see how far your 200 bucks would get you
Love to see GPU
It has a nice case. Dunno what you would do with the external PCIe slot, because if you don't have a dock for it, the firmly holds it in place, you can't just dangle a card off of the connector, it's useless. Same with the SATA ports, you need an extra case to hold this and hard drives.
I have the zimaboard, it has a pci slot too. I have a mini 2.5gb Nic card in it, it is fine for small cards.
You can use an PCIe extension cable and put it on a desktop chassis?
in my experience, hardware video acceleration works much better in firefox than chromium, at least in linux. Is there some particular reason to go with ubuntu?
Also in the youtube test, the codec is av1, so it wouldn't be hardware accelerated anyways except in the most recent chips (not in j3455 at least), so it was all software anyways. One would need an extension like h264ify or disable av1 in firefox's config to avail hardware accelerated with vp9 or avc on this chipset
I’d really love to find the cheapest mini PC that can do full speed PS3 at 720 or 1080p. Maybe the SER5 max?
The name reminds me of Zima, the awful alcoholic drink of the 90s 😂
I’d love to see the gpu performance and also windows performance
The DC adapter is just 36W. Do you have any information for the wattage available through the PCIe slot? I couldn't readily find it on the website. Interesting product.
Thanks for sharing! What pcie cards did you test, recommend?
I'm interested in seeing Batocera on this. I'm trying to figure out the best budget PC for Batocera.
It seems that there is no mention of ECC (Error Correcting Code) RAM support in the specifications or reviews of ZimaBlade. Does it support ECC RAM?
Looks like that would make a pretty good/cheap nas
Lol you avoided saying celeron for a while
2016 CPU running on DDR3. Nobody should have high hopes for this being much more useful than just a server, like it's advertised for.
rpi 4 is better performance but you'll still need to put it in a case. and power it.
BUT x86 has less emulation overhead.
Would like to see performance with a gtx 1650
I would be very curious to see how it performs with an emulation distro like Recalbox.
SBC that runs off your pcie slot as a add on pc to your desktop!!! that is what I thought this was but does that exist? cool anyway!!
If you still have the zimaboard, how does the performance compare? 8GB DDR4 vs 16GB DDR3L is one of those situations where it is hard to decide which is better.
So you could use the PCI Express port as an m.2. And the USB 3.0 super speed for an external GPU. As it would technically have more bandwidth.
But it would definitely be cheaper to use a PCI Express 16X to 4X adapter riser. And then get a m.2 adapter for USB 3.0.
If that internal emmc is not speedy enough for you. Or is not and more probably adequately sized for your OS. Especially if you're running windows.
And if the case is the heat sink. You think it might be beneficial to sit it on and ice pack for thermal overhead.?
Which would be pretty Radd.!!!
If only they put a little bit more 🦾 in that Arm. 😅
And had a full 16 X PCI Express 4.0 slot. With 1 or 2 NVMe M.2 expendable storage slot.
Because I really really love this form factor. 🤔❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
Would definitely love to see this thing running Windows with a 4090.! 😂 With at least an external fan under it.
You know. For science.! 🤓
Excellent review. Awesome video. 👍👍
Pls do a gpu test, otherwise the old Toaster PC is the way to go😅😂
Add a Low Profile GPU: RTX A2000 (6-12GB, vapor chamber blower,
A380 opens up HW AV1 transcoding. I'm glad there's three good, current, low power gpu choices
That RUclips video is playing AV1
I'd like you test a gpu that doesn't require external power. Not too confident it can power one up.
The PCIe slot is great, but DDR3 with a CPU from 2016.
How much faster is the 10nm N100, because you can get miniPCs with the N100 16GB of DDR4/DDR5, and a 512GB SSD for like $150.
However, IIRC the J34xx supported dual channel, where as the newer atom/celeron processors are single channel only, so if this came as dual channel DDR3 it could actually be faster in some cases.
0:46 - a ton of different WHAT? 🤣
Paterns on it look like "Love Death & Robot" ones
Do you have any suggestions for eGPU docks that are just a board or very simple design. I plan on putting it in my super tower to live so I don't really need a housing.
Id be funny if some random card nobody uses turns out to be the best gpu for this mini PC
Windows would probably help extract a little more performance. It would be a good comparison with the Pi 4 and 5, consumption also seems similar.
Especially if you used an old version of Windows like 7 and tuned it by removing a bunch of services and Vista is actually even faster if you spend time tweaking it.
@@YolandaPlayneYeah, it's incredible how well Windows 7 ran even on modest hardware. It seems that with each version of Windows there are more unnecessary things running in the background, making the system more inefficient and abusive of hardware resources.
@@DrakeTech-kh8hs Vista is a good mix of XP and 7 but it has a lot of cruft that can be removed.
Awesome.
I'd rather use one of these than any ARM Sbc
youtube test, it looks like its trying to use AV1 instead of VP9 maybe thats why its struggling?
definetly is
Hey ETA prime what’s up with the overclocking of the minisforum UM790 PRO, i followed your video to a T and for some reason the TDP never reached 85 degrees! I’m on Windows 11 PRO though and I’ve got 32gb ram and 1tb ssd, can you help, please! It would be greatly appreciated…
does it taste better if you put a jolly rancher in it?
What about the GPU? Like the good old cable-less GTX 1650?
is this mini PC's only power reception through the USB-C?
Will it do TrueNas Scale? Wondering about ZFS performance.
loving the blade ,very cool
Would be perfect If it's support ddr4 dual channel
How much power can the PCI-E output? I want to connect a SFP+ card to it for settings, even if it won't get the speed.
i'd like to see this running linux mint xfce along with the gpu. this could replace my pi zero 2 w.
Funny how Im not impressed with mini PCs after the Pi5
I will like to see remote access
this is an awesome idea but with how ancient the cpu is on this it's DOA
Please test with batocera
Show us the GPU running on it :D
Is it still a single board computer if you have to install RAM?
An Intel A380 will resolve Transcoding issues in hardware.
Wonder if this would be a good cheap option for a countertop arcade machine with a retro distro
No it wont. it's E Waste. Ya it will work but it struggles with 1x why torture yourself!
Can I drink it like a Zima? God I miss those...
😂
"I think it's locked at 90fps"
\*immediately hits 100fps
This is more like it
chromium support video hw acceleration on ubuntu?
Still looking for a cheaper less power hungry Plex server
But ... can I put it in a handheld?
I would like to see this compared to a lattepanda mu
What would be the bandwidth of that pcie
It's a PCIe Gen 2 x4 connector, which equates to an effective bandwidth of 1800 MB/s.
Whenever a company will not show the exact name of the CPU(s) onboard then this gets the Spidey senses tingling.
But then I saw DDR3L and this confirmed that this was not going to be Alder Lake, or even something quite recent.
ETA states that it is being marketed as single board server but it is crystal clear on their website that they are marketed as many things, including Retro Game Emulator and single cable PC.
Th I/O, for what it is, has to be seen to be quite impressive overall and that external PCI slot is a far better and ore sturdy looking option than the Raspberry Pi 5 has. It does show that if you can pack in all this I/O on a relatively cheap product with an older SOC, why don't other manufacturers follow suit with more recent offerings? I think the answer is the drip feed tech that we are seeing.
Whilst the full function USB-C is nice, it is somewhat restricted to specific uses if you want to use it for data or video because it is generally required for power.
If the company had put as much effort into not hiding away from the detailed specs as they did into creating a fancy web page then I might have at least been more positive but my trust is already somewhat eroded.
They did provide a link to the CNX Software site, who got a sneak peek look at this earlier on in the month , where it was mentioned that "or roughly equivalent to boards based on the Rockchip RK3588 SoC."
I look forward to a comparison based upon a variety of uses.
The Big Buck Bunny performance was clearly better than the stats indicated and the eyes could see it. Better than the performance shown on the Raspberry Pi 5, where it was apparently "not too bad, if I didn't have stats for nerds on, I'd be totally content" according to ETA. And yet here, despite better playback that the eyes can see, it is somehow struggling? It does have to bring into sharp focus the question of some potential BIAS coming in, which cannot be good for trust.
Again, when comparing Open Arena, the Pi 4 performance was initially mentioned as being around 41Fps, with the Pi 5 being 60fps. This board was playing at a constant 90fps, where suddenly the concluding comparison was only to the Pi 4, not the Pi 5. Rather worrying to me.
The company is clear about the added shipping cost, which is in their favour but when I add all things together, plus the 20% tax for shipping to my region of the world, it just doesn't cut the mustard enough based on the processor and RAM specs alone.
For the server side of things though, I could see some people jumping all over this as the I/O alone might be attractive, even though the ability for it to cope with heavier and consecutive traffic demands might still show some drawbacks.
Close but no cigar. Now if they were to look at the same board with an N95/N100, then they might be onto something, even if a little more expensive.
"Whilst the full function USB-C is nice, it is somewhat restricted to specific uses if you want to use it for data or video because it is generally required for power."
Can't you just use a cheap 20€ dock and get both power and addition I/O?
i fail to see the point of this product. 7 year old Celeron for $96 + $20 shipping. Who needs x86 instructions on a SBC that badly? Its "end of servicing updates" is today lol
Interesting
Wow
raspberry pi 5 or this.... HMMMMMmmmmmmmm, hard decision for cheap toys that keeps getting more and more expensive
rpi 5 is a lot faster but you're still going to need storage, a case and power.
Better buy chromebox 2
Is Windows supported?
Intel inside so.............
@@iahklu
I check everywhere, the were no mention of Windows.
First comment! 😂