DFI CS170 Intel 8th and 9th Gen Core Mini-ITX Embedded Motherboards with H310, Q370 or C246 Chipset and LVDS

Vision cells, inspection stations and test systems often pair a capable processor with an add-in GPU or frame grabber inside a compact enclosure that runs warm. The DFI CS170 series is a socketed LGA1151 Mini-ITX board of 170 x 170 mm with a PCIe x16 slot, ATX power and an operating range of -5 to 65 °C, so the processor and the card are chosen for the job and the board copes with a warmer cabinet.

Each CS170 board takes 8th and 9th Gen Intel Core (Coffee Lake) i9, i7, i5 and i3 processors, from four to eight cores, in standard, T, E and TE versions, plus the two-core Pentium G5400 and Celeron G4900. The ceiling is 95 W with the Core i9-9900K. Two DDR4 2400/2666 MHz SO-DIMMs hold up to 32 GB. Intel UHD Graphics 630 (UHD 610 on Pentium and Celeron) decodes HEVC, VP9 and H.264 in hardware and drives an internal dual-channel LVDS panel, VGA and two DP++ ports at the rear, with 4K on DisplayPort.

CS170-H310DB uses the Intel H310 chipset with an I219V GbE controller, dual display, four rear USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and an M.2 M-key slot for NVMe at PCIe x1 Gen2. CS170-Q370DB and CS170-C246DB use an I219LM controller with Intel vPro and AMT on Core i5 and i7, triple display, two rear USB 3.1 Gen 2 and four Gen 1 ports, an M.2 M-key slot that runs NVMe at PCIe x4 Gen3 or SATA, and RAID 0, 1 and 5. Only the C246 build takes the eight-core Xeon E-2278GE and six-core Xeon E-2176G at 80 W, with ECC memory on Xeon, Core i3, Pentium and Celeron processors; Core i5 and i7 run non-ECC.

Every board has two GbE ports, the second on an Intel I210AT, two RS-232 ports on DB9 connectors at the rear, internal USB 2.0 and 8-bit DIO. The PCIe x16 Gen3 slot supplies up to 75 W to a card, two SATA 3.0 ports and the M.2 M-key 2280 slot take storage, and an M.2 E-key 2230 slot takes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Realtek audio gives line-out, line-in and mic-in at the rear.

Power comes from a standard ATX supply on 24-pin and 4-pin connectors. The boards operate from -5 to 65 °C and carry CE, FCC and RoHS compliance, with a TPM 2.0 as standard and a watchdog programmable from 1 to 255 seconds. DFI lists Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 64-bit and Linux, and offers thermal solutions for 35 W, 65 W and 95 W processors.