DFI AL253-BN-40E50 Intel Atom x7-E3950 4″ Embedded Board with 9 to 36 V DC Input and Quad GbE

A network appliance in a comms room or control building often has four jobs for four ports: plant network, machine cell, camera segment and uplink. The AL253-BN-40E50 is the quad-core Atom x7-E3950 build in the DFI AL253 series of 4″ embedded boards, with four GbE ports on a 165 x 115 mm EPIC-size board for indoor installs at 0 to 60 °C.

The Intel Atom x7-E3950 (Apollo Lake) runs four cores at 1.6 GHz, bursting to 2.0 GHz, within a 12 W TDP. This build has 4 GB of DDR3L soldered on the board plus one DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMM slot, taking the total to 8 GB where firewall rules, packet capture or a local database need the headroom. Intel HD Graphics drives a DP++ output at up to 4096 x 2160 at 60 Hz and a VGA output at up to 1920 x 1200, so a local status screen can run alongside the main display.

The four GbE ports use Intel I211AT or I210IT controllers on RJ45. Four RS-232/422/485 COM ports and an 8-bit DIO reach meters, drives and relays, and USB is two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports plus two USB 2.0 on headers. An M.2 E-key (2230) takes Wi-Fi, a full-size Mini PCIe socket with SIM takes a cellular module, and one SATA port takes an SSD. Firmware TPM 2.0 and a watchdog timer are standard.

The AL253-BN-40E50 runs from 9 to 36 V DC on a barrel connector, cooled by a fanless heatsink, and carries CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance. For the same processor in an outdoor or roadside cabinet, AL253-TN-40E50 is rated for -40 to 85 °C. If the workload is lighter, AL253-BN-40E40 offers four cores at 9.5 W with the same 4 GB down.