ZimaCube 2 vs UGREEN DXP6800: Which 6-Bay NAS to Buy

The ZimaCube 2 and the UGREEN NASync DXP6800 run the same two Intel chips, the Core i3-1215U in the cheaper model and the Core i5-1235U in the Pro. Both put six 3.5-inch SATA bays in a desktop box. The CPU therefore settles nothing in a ZimaCube 2 vs UGREEN comparison, and the decision comes down to the M.2 layout, the network ports, the operating system, the warranty and which store you buy from.

This comparison lines up four configurations: the ZimaCube 2 Standard against the UGREEN DXP6800 Plus, and the ZimaCube 2 Pro against the DXP6800 Pro. It covers price direct and on Amazon, memory and Quick Sync, the M.2 bays, 10GbE and Thunderbolt, PCIe expansion and ZimaOS against UGOS Pro. It closes with the key power, noise and throughput figures that independent reviewers have measured on these boxes. The DXP6800 Pro vs Plus question gets its own answer along the way.

Specs and Amazon prices checked October 2026 against ZimaOS 1.7.1.

ZimaCube 2 vs UGREEN DXP6800: the verdict

At the Pro tier on Amazon, the UGREEN DXP6800 Pro is the better buy: about $325 cheaper, two 10GbE ports instead of one, tool-less trays, fan control and a 3-year warranty against one year from Zima. The ZimaCube 2 wins on M.2 capacity (four extra slots in its seventh bay), two PCIe slots instead of one, and an operating system that builds its arrays on standard Linux mdadm and Btrfs. Bought direct from both makers, the two Pro models now cost the same, so off Amazon the UGREEN case rests on its hardware, not its price. At the entry tier, the ZimaCube 2 Standard is about $40 cheaper on Amazon (about $140 cheaper bought direct, since the Plus is Amazon-only) than the DXP6800 Plus and adds Thunderbolt 4 and a second PCIe slot, but gives up 10GbE; for a 10GbE network the Plus is the pick, otherwise the ZimaCube Standard.

How this comparison was built

Neither unit was benchmarked in the lab for this piece, so every measured figure below is attributed to the review that produced it. The ZimaCube 2 specification work comes from the research behind the ZimaCube 2 NAS build guide. That covers the Zima spec table, its drive compatibility list, the ServeTheHome teardown of the Pro, the NASCompares and TechRadar reviews and two long-form video tests. The UGREEN side uses the UGREEN product and warranty pages, the LocalHake Proxmox-based review of the DXP6800 Pro, Dong Knows, ITPro, StorageReview and lspci output from a public GitHub teardown of the board.

Prices come from the Amazon product API on October 19, 2026, cross-checked against the store run by each maker. The DXP6800 Plus is the weak link: UGREEN has no product page for it, and no hands-on review with measurements exists. Its specs come from the Amazon listing UGREEN runs, plus a spec aggregator for the PCIe slot, memory slots and the absence of Thunderbolt, so treat its column with that caveat. CPU facts come from the Intel ARK pages. Where sources disagreed, the resolution is noted in the relevant section.

Price: the store decides the Pro matchup

The ZimaCube 2 costs $100 to $125 more on Amazon than on the Zima store. On Amazon the bare DXP6800 Pro is back in stock at about $1,100 (UGREEN’s bundle of the same unit with an 8K HDMI cable has sold out instead), which undercuts the ZimaCube 2 Pro at about $1,425 by roughly $325. Direct, the ZimaCube 2 Pro is $1,299 and UGREEN’s own US store asks $1,300 for the DXP6800 Pro, so buying direct is a tie and the Amazon listing is about $200 cheaper than UGREEN’s store.

At the entry tier, the ZimaCube 2 Standard at about $899 on Amazon ($799 direct) sits about $40 under the UGREEN DXP6800 Plus at about $939. The ZimaCube Standard brings Thunderbolt 4 and two PCIe slots, and the Plus brings a 10GbE port. The Standard listing showed “Only 18 left” when checked, so stock is thin. Amazon prices on both brands move weekly during the 2026 memory shortage, so check the live price before ordering.

CPU, memory and Quick Sync: identical silicon, different RAM

The Core i3-1215U has 6 cores and 8 threads (2 performance, 4 efficient) with UHD Graphics. The Core i5-1235U has 10 cores and 12 threads (2 performance, 8 efficient). Both boost to 4.4 GHz, both are 15 W chips with a 55 W turbo ceiling, and both have Quick Sync for hardware video transcoding. Peak CPU performance between matching tiers is therefore the same, although sustained performance depends on the cooling in each chassis (covered in the measured table), and the bigger difference is the memory each vendor installs.

Every model has two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots and takes up to 64 GB. The ZimaCube 2 Pro ships with 16 GB across both slots, which ServeTheHome confirmed in its teardown. The DXP6800 Pro ships with 8 GB. That matters more than it looks: Intel only allows the Iris Xe branding on the i5-1235U when memory runs dual-channel, and on a single stick the iGPU is branded UHD Graphics and has roughly half the memory bandwidth to work with. A DXP6800 Pro owner who wants the faster iGPU for Plex or Jellyfin transcoding should add a second stick. The Zima spec table calls the memory LPDDR5, but every review that opened the case found replaceable DDR5-4800 SO-DIMMs.

Neither box has true ECC. The Intel ARK pages list ECC as unsupported on both CPUs. UGREEN advertises “ODECC”, which is the on-die error correction built into every DDR5 chip, not end-to-end ECC between memory and CPU. For a ZFS build where ECC memory is a firm requirement, neither of these machines qualifies.

Storage: six SATA bays each, very different M.2

Both take six 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch SATA drives. The DXP6800 Pro trays are tool-less push and pull, as LocalHake confirmed. The ZimaCube trays need screws and have no locks, which TechRadar flagged in its review. The Zima compatibility list marks some Seagate IronWolf models as “No” or “Depends”, and WD Red Plus and Red Pro as compatible, so check it before buying disks. Neither vendor locks the buyer into its own branded drives the way some NAS makers once did.

The M.2 story is where the two diverge. The ZimaCube 2 has a seventh bay holding four M.2 slots for data, plus a separate onboard slot for its 256 GB OS drive. On the Standard, each slot in that bay gets a PCIe Gen3 x1 link according to NASCompares, which caps a single drive at roughly 800 MB/s, and the Zima FAQ describes the bay as sharing about 800 MB/s overall. NASCompares then measured about 1,600 MB/s read across the bay over USB4, double the Zima figure, so treat the 800 MB/s number as conservative. On the Pro, an ASMedia switch feeds the bay with a Gen3 x4 uplink that ServeTheHome documented, and Zima quotes about 3,200 MB/s for the bay as a whole. On the Standard, four NVMe drives at x1 each suit a fast flash pool for apps or photos, but not a scratch disk that needs full NVMe speed.

The DXP6800 Pro has two data M.2 slots, and lspci output from a GitHub teardown shows one at x4 and one at x2. The 128 GB OS drive sits on an x1 link. LocalHake measured a PCIe 4.0 drive at 3,009 MB/s read, below Gen4 x4 speeds, without naming which slot it used, so full Gen4 bandwidth has not been shown in testing. UGREEN does not state the PCIe generation for these slots on its spec page. For raw SATA throughput the UGREEN is proven: LocalHake measured 611 MB/s read and 607 MB/s write from six hard drives in ZFS RAID-Z2.

Network, Thunderbolt and PCIe expansion

This is the strongest section for the DXP6800 Pro. It has two Aquantia 10GbE ports, and LocalHake measured 9.38 to 9.41 Gbit/s on them. The ZimaCube 2 Pro has one 10GbE port (an AQC113 on an M.2 card, connected by ribbon cable) plus two 2.5GbE ports. The ZimaCube 2 Standard has only the two 2.5GbE ports. The DXP6800 Plus has one 10GbE and one 2.5GbE port. The ZimaCube 2 Pro and the DXP6800 Plus can each run a direct 10GbE link to a workstation alongside a 2.5GbE LAN uplink, but only the DXP6800 Pro has two 10GbE ports, for 10GbE link aggregation or a 10GbE direct link plus a 10GbE uplink.

Thunderbolt 4 appears on three of the four models; the DXP6800 Plus is the one without it. That is the main hardware difference in the DXP6800 Pro vs Plus decision, together with the i5 against the i3 and the second 10GbE port. A Thunderbolt port works as a direct high-speed link to a Mac or laptop without a 10GbE switch, which NASCompares measured at roughly 1,700 to 2,000 MB/s read from six SATA SSDs over a USB4 connection to a Mac on the ZimaCube 2.

PCIe expansion favours Zima. The ZimaCube 2 has two low-profile slots: a Gen4 x4 slot in an x16 connector wired to the CPU, and a Gen3 x2 slot in an x8 connector off the chipset. Neither provides auxiliary power, so a GPU must stay under the 75 W the slot supplies. The DXP6800 Pro has one x4 slot in an open-ended connector, also low-profile, and the cover has to come off to reach it. With two slots, a ZimaCube can take a 10GbE card and a low-profile GPU at the same time. The 10GbE NIC guide covers low-profile cards that fit either chassis.

Power delivery differs too. Both ZimaCube 2 models run from a 247 W external brick, while both UGREEN models have an internal supply and take a plain AC cable. An internal PSU is tidier on a shelf, while an external brick is cheaper and quicker to replace if it fails.

ZimaOS vs UGOS Pro

ZimaOS offers RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and JBOD in the web UI, with ZFS available only from the command line. A Docker-based app store accepts one-click installs and imported Docker Compose files, and remote access runs over its own peer-to-peer client. The free tier covers four disks and three users. ZimaOS Plus removes those limits for a one-time $29, and every ZimaCube 2 ships with Plus included. Elevated Systems found no fan control and no SSD cache option in the UI. The ZimaOS CLI cheat sheet covers what the command line adds.

UGOS Pro uses Btrfs and ext4 with Basic, JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10, and has no ZFS. Snapshots work only on Btrfs volumes. It ships Docker, a VM manager and three fan modes, and has no paid tier. Two points stand out for anyone planning to leave the platform later, or who cares where usage data goes. First, according to a teardown of UGOS pools published by a UGREEN owner, UGOS sets proprietary feature flags on both ext4 and Btrfs, so upstream Linux tools refuse to mount its pools on another machine. Second, a “Device analysis” program collects account and device IDs, IP addresses and click data; it can be turned off under Control Panel, About, Device analysis. Migrating a UGREEN box to another OS later therefore means copying every file off first. ZimaOS builds its arrays on standard Linux mdadm with Btrfs on top, according to a community procedure republished on the Zima store, and no proprietary on-disk flags have been reported for it.

Warranty and running TrueNAS or Unraid instead

UGREEN gives the DXP6800 series a 3-year warranty, with 1 year on the power adapter. Zima gives the ZimaCube 2 one year globally and up to two in the EU. The Amazon listing for the DXP6800 Plus says 2 years while the UGREEN warranty page says the whole DXP6800 series gets 3, so keep the order confirmation and check the warranty page if a claim comes up. Over a typical five-year NAS life, one to two extra years of coverage are worth more than the price difference at the entry tier. The UGREEN product page for the DXP6800 Pro shows both 2-year and 3-year warranty banners, another reason to keep the paperwork.

Both boxes run a third-party OS. Zima publishes its own guide for installing Unraid on the ZimaCube and markets the box as zero lock-in, though its warranty policy says nothing either way. According to a 2024 NASCompares guide, UGREEN has said a third-party OS does not void the hardware warranty as long as the software does not harm the hardware, and a 2026 needtoknowit guide notes that UGREEN will not support software problems on a third-party OS. On the UGREEN, disable the watchdog in the BIOS first, and expect to set up fan control and front-panel LEDs by hand. For choosing between the two common replacements, the TrueNAS vs Unraid lab test measured capacity, expansion and bit-rot repair on identical hardware.

Measured numbers from published reviews

Every figure below was measured by the named reviewer on their own unit and configuration, so compare within a row with care. No independent review has measured the DXP6800 Plus yet.

Without drives, the DXP6800 Pro idles a few watts lower than either ZimaCube in these tests, though the reviewers ran different operating systems (NASCompares measured 33 to 36 W on ZimaOS with SSDs); at the EIA average residential rate of 18.19 cents per kWh, a gap of about 2.6 to 7.6 W is roughly $4 to $12 a year. The CPU in the DXP6800 Pro runs hot under sustained stress, which matters for heavy transcoding or VMs but not for file serving. The figure that matters most for most buyers is the 10GbE result, and only the DXP6800 Pro has two ports to show for it. For the wider build or buy decision against a DIY box, see the DIY NAS vs prebuilt cost breakdown, and for drives to fill either chassis, the NAS hard drive picks.