DFI AL170-CT-E3950 Intel Atom x7-E3950 Mini-ITX SBC with Dual GbE and Extended Temperature

Machine HMIs and process controllers often sit in cabinets that see frost in winter and heat in summer, and replacing a board there should not mean a new enclosure. The AL170-CT-E3950 is the top compute build in the DFI AL170 series of Mini-ITX SBCs, rated from -40 to 85 °C and fed from a standard 24-pin ATX supply.

Its Intel Atom x7-E3950 (Apollo Lake) has four cores at 1.6 GHz, bursting to 2.0 GHz, within a 12 W TDP, the highest in the series, which leaves room for a local HMI, data logging and protocol conversion on one board. Two DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMM slots take up to 8 GB. Intel HD Graphics drives three independent displays: a rear VGA, a rear DP++ at up to 4096 x 2160 at 60 Hz and an internal dual-channel LVDS header for a panel up to 1920 x 1200.

Two GbE ports on Intel I210IT controllers keep a machine network apart from the plant network. Two RS-232/422/485 ports on rear DB9 connectors, four RS-232 headers and 8-bit DIO connect PLCs, barcode readers and relays, and four rear USB 3.0 ports sit with six internal USB 2.0 headers. 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 cellular, and a PCIe x1 Gen2 slot adds a card.

The AL170-CT-E3950 runs fanless on its heatsink across the full -40 to 85 °C range, with a watchdog programmable from 1 to 255 seconds and support for Windows 10 64-bit LTSB and Linux. If the application needs less power, AL170-CT-E3930 keeps the same extended temperature rating on a dual-core 6.5 W Atom. For an indoor installation at 0 to 60 °C, AL170-CB-E3950 uses the same processor with two DP++ outputs and LVDS.