DFI MTH253 Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake 4" Embedded Boards with Triple LAN, Six COM Ports and 9 to 36 V DC Input

Replacing an older 4″ board in an existing cabinet usually means keeping the serial wiring, the DC supply and the mounting holes, while the software on top now asks for far more compute than the original design carried. The DFI MTH253 series keeps the EPIC-size 165 x 115 mm footprint, six COM ports and a 9 to 36 V DC input, and moves the compute to Intel Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake) processors with soldered memory and current Intel graphics.

Meteor Lake combines performance and efficient cores in one package, so a single MTH253 board can run control logic, a local HMI and video analytics side by side. Memory is LPDDR5/x soldered to the board in dual channel, so there is no SO-DIMM to work loose under vibration. The integrated graphics support DirectX 12.2, OpenGL 4.6 and OpenCL 3.0, with hardware encode and decode for AV1, HEVC, VP9 and AVC. Displays run from an HDMI 1.4b output, a USB-C port with DisplayPort Alt Mode at up to 4096 x 2304 and an internal dual-channel LVDS connector, for three displays at once.

The range has four builds in two power classes. MTH253-BN-32U7165H pairs the 16-core Core Ultra 7 165H, up to 5.0 GHz at 28 W, with 32 GB of memory for multi-camera and consolidated workloads. MTH253-BN-16U5135H uses the 14-core Core Ultra 5 135H, also at 28 W, with 16 GB. Both H builds use an active cooler. MTH253-BN-16U5155U carries the 12-core Core Ultra 7 155U at 15 W and up to 4.8 GHz, and MTH253-BN-16U5125U the 12-core Core Ultra 5 125U at 15 W, both with 16 GB and a passive heatsink for fanless enclosures.

Networking is two 2.5GbE ports on Intel I226V and one GbE port on Intel I210AT, with out-of-band management support on the GbE port. The six COM ports are two RS-232/422/485 and two RS-232 on DB9, plus two RS-232 on internal headers, and 8-bit DIO is available on COM4 by jumper. Five USB 3.2 Type-A ports and a USB 2.0 header handle peripherals. An M.2 M-key 2280 at PCIe Gen4 x4 takes an NVMe SSD, an M.2 B-key 3052 with a nano SIM slot takes a 4G or 5G module, and an M.2 E-key 2230 takes Wi-Fi, with one SATA 3.0 port alongside.

Power is 9 to 36 V DC on a 4-pin connector or a barrel connector, so the boards run directly from 12 or 24 V supplies. The MTH253 series operates from -5 to 65 °C, which suits indoor cabinets and control rooms, and carries CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance, a TPM 2.0 and a watchdog timer programmable from 1 to 255 seconds. DFI lists support for Windows 11 and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 64-bit and Linux.