DFI CMS173-Q470E Intel 10th Gen Core Industrial Mini-ITX Motherboard with Q470E Chipset, Dual LAN and 15 to 36 V DC Input

An inspection station on a production line or a controller in a machine cabinet usually has two constraints before any others: it must run from the 24 V rail already in the enclosure, and it must connect several cameras and peripherals. The CMS173-Q470E is the board in the DFI CMS173 series of industrial Mini-ITX motherboards, and it meets both with a 15 to 36 V DC input and 12 USB 3.2 ports at the rear.

The LGA1200 socket on the Intel Q470E chipset takes 10th Gen Intel Core i9, i7, i5 and i3 processors, from four to ten cores, and two-core Pentium G6400E and Celeron G5900E and G5900TE parts, at up to 65 W TDP. A 35 W TE processor keeps heat down in a closed cabinet, and a 65 W Core i7 or i9 E part suits multi-camera inspection where the enclosure has airflow. Two DDR4 2933 MHz SO-DIMMs take up to 64 GB, and Intel UHD Graphics drives two 4K DP++ outputs.

Eight rear USB ports are USB 3.2 Gen 2 and four are USB 3.2. Two GbE ports use an Intel I219LM, with vPro and AMT on vPro-capable processors, and an Intel I211AT, so the camera network and plant network stay apart. One RS-232/422/485 port sits on a rear DB9 and another on an internal header, with 8-bit DIO for machine signals. The M.2 M-key takes an NVMe SSD at PCIe Gen3 x4 or SATA, the B-key an LTE or 5G module with SIM holder, and the E-key Wi-Fi 6. Two SATA 3.0 ports support RAID 0 and 1, and a PCIe x16 slot with x8 Gen3 signalling takes a frame grabber.

The CMS173-Q470E runs from 15 to 36 V DC on a DC jack and operates from -5 to 65 °C, a standard range for indoor cabinets, with CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance, an optional Infineon TPM and a watchdog programmable from 1 to 255 seconds. DFI lists Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019 and Ubuntu 20.04. For a 12 V supply, the CMS171 is the same board.