DFI AL170 Intel Apollo Lake Atom and Pentium Mini-ITX Motherboards with Dual GbE and Extended Temperature Options

Many control cabinets, kiosks and machines are still built around a standard ATX power supply and a Mini-ITX mounting tray, and replacing the board should not mean redesigning the enclosure. The DFI AL170 series fits that brief: a 170 x 170 mm Mini-ITX board on Intel Apollo Lake processors, fed from a 24-pin ATX connector and cooled by a fanless heatsink. It keeps the rear DB9 serial ports and digital I/O that older machine and retail designs still rely on.

Every AL170 board takes two DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMMs for up to 8 GB and uses Intel HD Graphics, with DP++ outputs that drive 4K at 60 Hz and support for three independent displays. The processors run from 6 to 12 W, so a passive heatsink is enough, and DFI supports Windows 10 64-bit LTSB and Linux with UEFI boot.

The range covers seven builds. Three are rated from -40 to 85 °C, with Intel I210IT Ethernet and VGA, DP++ and LVDS outputs: AL170-CT-E3950 with the quad-core Atom x7-E3950 at 12 W, AL170-CT-E3940 with the quad-core x5-E3940 at 9.5 W and AL170-CT-E3930 with the dual-core x5-E3930 at 6.5 W. Four standard builds run from 0 to 60 °C on Intel I211AT Ethernet with two DP++ outputs. AL170-CB-E3950 and AL170-CB-E3940 add a dual-channel LVDS header for a panel, while AL170-CB-N4200, with the quad-core Pentium N4200, and AL170-CB-N3350, with the dual-core Celeron N3350, both at 6 W, use eDP for the panel instead.

Across the series, two GbE ports on RJ45 separate a machine network from the site network. Four rear USB 3.0 ports and six internal USB 2.0 headers cover peripherals, and six COM ports (two RS-232/422/485 on rear DB9 connectors, four RS-232 on internal headers) sit alongside 8-bit DIO. Storage is two SATA 3.0 ports and an M.2 M-key (2242/2280) for a PCIe or SATA SSD. A full-size Mini PCIe slot takes Wi-Fi or a cellular module, a PCIe x1 Gen2 slot, which shares signals with the M.2, adds a card, and an LPC header accepts DFI’s module for four more COM ports.

Power comes from a standard ATX supply on the 24-pin connector. A watchdog programmable from 1 to 255 seconds, Realtek ALC888 audio and an optional discrete TPM 2.0 complete the board. Where the enclosure has a DC supply instead, the AL171 series takes 12 V DC and the AL173 series takes 15 to 36 V DC.