DFI AL173 Intel Apollo Lake Industrial Mini-ITX Motherboards with 15 to 36 V DC Input and Extended Temperature Options

Much industrial equipment runs from a 24 V DC rail, and a board that accepts that supply directly avoids a separate DC-DC converter and its wiring in the cabinet. The DFI AL173 series takes a 15 to 36 V DC input on a barrel connector or 4-pin header and puts Intel Apollo Lake processors on a fanless 170 x 170 mm Mini-ITX board. It keeps the serial ports and digital I/O that machine builders rely on, with LVDS and eDP connectors for both older and current panels.

Every AL173 board takes two DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMMs for up to 8 GB and uses Intel HD Graphics. Display connectors cover VGA, DP++ at up to 4K 60 Hz, dual-channel LVDS and eDP, with three running at once as independent displays. The two GbE ports use one Intel I211 and one I210 controller, with the IT versions of both on the extended temperature builds.

The range has three builds. AL173-CT-E3950 pairs the quad-core Atom x7-E3950 at 12 W with a -40 to 85 °C rating for vehicle HMIs and outdoor cabinets. AL173-CT-E3930 keeps that rating with the dual-core x5-E3930 at 6.5 W, for gateways and loggers where heat and power draw matter most. AL173-CB-N4200 uses the quad-core Pentium N4200 at 6 W, bursting to 2.5 GHz, for indoor machines and 24 V control panels at 0 to 60 °C.

Across the series there are six COM ports on internal headers (two RS-232/422/485 and four RS-232), 8-bit DIO, four rear USB 3.0 ports and five internal USB 2.0 connections. Two SATA 3.0 ports and an M.2 B-key (2242/2280) with PCIe, SATA and USB signals take an SSD or a cellular module. A full-size Mini PCIe slot takes Wi-Fi, a PCIe x1 Gen2 slot adds a card, and an LPC header accepts DFI’s module for four more COM ports.

The boards carry CE, FCC, RoHS and UL compliance, a watchdog programmable from 1 to 255 seconds, an optional discrete TPM 2.0 and support for Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 64-bit and Linux with UEFI boot. For projects on a fixed 12 V supply, the AL171 series uses the same board design with a 12 V DC input, so one software image can cover both.