Sipeed NanoKVM-PCIe IP-KVM Remote Control Operations Maintenance Server, DDR3 RISC-V Linux Development Board, 1TOPS NPU 1GHz SG2002 RISC-V CPU, HDMI PCIe 100M Network Port (NanoKVM-PCIe ETH)

Exactly what I've wanted for my home lab servers, easy "bolt-in" IPMI with all the basic bells and whistles you need to manage the hardware from scratch. Absolutely worth if like me you hate having to go to the cabinet all the time whenever there's a failure.

This thing is brilliant. It single handedly brought the price of an internal ipkvm down from $350+ to $80. No need to buy raspberry pi CM modules or anything. Not only does the hardware work really well, but the software is an absolute breeze. I didn't even know that it has integrated tailscale VPN in the software, which makes it dead simple to access the device over the internet. The only thing that I think needs improvement is the hardware installation documentation, which is a bit confusing in terms of wiring the header wires. It's just not very clear.

I've needed a out of band IPMI/BMC setup for two office PC's at a rural remote office in order to assist in troubleshooting when they go down or don't come back from Windows updates. I was happy to discover the NanoKVM in some YouTube reviews (Linus Tech Tips) and decided I should investigate one of the NanoKVM variants. I wanted the all internal option so I chose the PCIe+PoE version. Setup was EXTREMLY simple and should be for anyone who builds PCs. The box included the PCie card, HDMI cable, two USB A to C cables, and provided pin header cables. The card size is a really small PCIe x1 size card and is built really well overall. It doesn't feel cheap or like some second rate knockoff part. I simply removed the power, reset buttons and power and led light cables from the motherboard header. I then plugged them into the passthrough pins on the NanoKVM and used the provided cable to route right back over to the motherboard header. This functionality works flawlessly via the NanoKVM portal. Speaking of which, I connected a Cat6 cable and the Nano KVM was discovered on the network after a quick IP scan. The control panel is simple, very basic and this is most likely because their software is still in active development. Reaction time/speed has a tiny bit of lag, but not really any different from Dell's iDRAC on servers. After it was installed I upgraded the latest version of the software and flashed the SD card on the PCIe card to the latest version to address some issues I had, but unfortunately that didn't resolve those. The reason for 4 stars is not because the unit doesn't work, it's because the software has a ways to go in development. The first issue I had was that this card is connected to a desktop PC with 3 monitors setup. Initially when logging in the remote screen was void of any icons and the taskbar was empty. I had no way to see my primary monitor and thus not able to control the system! I discovered in troubleshooting, Windows adds the NanoKVM as an additional monitor. In my case this was 'monitor' #4. I decided to replicate monitor 1 to monitor 4 and that resolved my issue of not seeing my primary monitor in the web control panel. The second outstanding issue is that the KVM only supports a single monitor in it's remote panel. I would thoroughly enjoy it if it could somehow support three monitors, but that is a minor gripe. The last, but probably biggest remaining bug is that I can only sometimes access my motherboard BIOS remotely. It appears with my monitor setup above, I can only access the BIOS/POST screens if I do a clean reboot/restart of Windows. But if the PC was powered off and I had to remotely power it on and see the POST/BIOS screens, it doesn't. Most likely because at that point in the initial hardware boot, it's not considering this as a primary monitor. I am going to see about ordering an HDMI splitter (1 in - 2 out) and connect the KVM nano to the splitter with the primary monitor sharing the other HDMI port to do more of a hardware 'sharing' to see if that allows me to access the BIOS remotely. Overall, this just needs more polishing, but is still VERY usable in a production environment. I have other PC's in this remote office but I may try JetKVM or one of the others to see how their products are.

Ok so as an owner of 2 of the nanokvm white box kits, these are night and day, more stable, faster, newer better features and above all functional features like virtual CD rom hosting, im not being critical of the standalone USB first versions because they were first versions and the software stack clearly wasn't ready but I can say enthusiasticly that it's ready now, yes these are a different form factor than the ones I got directly from sipeed as beta devices, those were unstable and both eventually encountered issues related to power isolation on the USB power in especially when powering from the same system that it's trying to control... All that fixed and now I own 3 of these wifi pcie editions and now they are giving my pikvms a run for there money

There are no instructions with the kit. You can figure it out with some thinking but it would’ve been nice to have a basic pinout included with the kit. The web UI is ok as well but it’s certainly not plug and play play yet on the software side. I had to click through a bunch of different settings to get video and keyboard and mouse to work. TLDR; If you play with it, you can get it to work but it’s not plug and play.