Hi everyone! Just wanted to share my excitement to get my hands on a ZimaBlade!
As you have probably seen a few review units have been sent out to popular YouTubers for their vlogs / review and I have been lucky enough to get my hands on one to tinker with and work on some designs so I thought I would pop a post up here to show you how It has gone so far!
First up the ominous box of good sniff!
Then the minor reveal!
And the nice touch I never forget. It makes my heart warm!
Here we are next to my ZimaBoard for size comparison
I don’t have a separate pic to show the pcie boards that came to me with this however here is my collection of Zima compatible boards. As you can see from 2.5gbe, 10gbe, wifi6e, usb 3.0 and SATA expansion, there is a massive range!
Back to the blade… of course I had to build the NAS like everyone else…
For this I used the Quadcore ZimaBlade, installed the 8gb ddr3 sodimm stick and added 2* 512gb SSD in my own 3D Printed drive adapters:
And then of course, I had to pop it into the NAS frame
I would love you show you what’s currently going on but I’ll save that for a later update 
My feelings so far:
Just like the ZimaBoard the Blade has been built really well. You can tell the team have taken their time to get things right, from component selection to the design of the outer casing it just feels right.
Those familiar with a Raspberry pi or other SBCs will know the slightly flimsy delicate feeling of those boards… this is nothing like that. I would have no problem throwing this in my bag to take to the office and know it will arrive safe. Even the clear plastic top feels sturdy.
As with all these products, the opportunities are endless and I’m looking forward to exploring a few options for adding and expanding / replacing parts of my home lab
took a little while and a lot of shouting at it but it behaved eventually!