DFI AL053-TC-E3950 2.5″ Pico-ITX SBC with Intel Atom x7-E3950, Wide-Range DC Input and -40 to 85 °C

Equipment that sits outside or on a vehicle has to ride through frost, heat and an untidy DC supply without a fan. The AL053-TC-E3950 is the quad-core Atom x7-E3950 build for -40 to 85 °C in the DFI AL053 series: a 2.5 inch Pico-ITX SBC, also called a Pico-ITX motherboard, with a 9 to 36 V DC input on a 100 x 72 mm board.

It runs a quad-core Intel Atom x7-E3950 at 1.6 GHz with bursts to 2.0 GHz, 2 MB cache and a 12 W TDP, which suits control, display and data logging software. One 204-pin DDR3L-1866 SO-DIMM socket takes up to 8 GB in single channel. Intel HD Graphics decodes H.264 and H.265 in hardware and drives two independent displays: Mini DP++ on the rear up to 4096 x 2160 at 60 Hz, and dual-channel 18/24-bit LVDS up to 1920 x 1200 with an LCD and inverter power header for a built-in panel.

The rear edge carries one Gigabit Ethernet port on an Intel I211AT controller, with Intel I210IT on request, and two USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports. Internal headers add two USB 2.0 ports, one RS-232/422/485 port, 8-bit digital I/O, SMBus and HD audio line-out and mic-in on a Realtek ALC262-VC2-GR codec. An M.2 B key 2242 socket takes a PCIe or SATA SSD, and a full-size Mini PCIe socket takes an add-on card. The AL053-TC-E3930 is the dual-core x5-E3930 build at the same rating, and the AL053-BC-E3950 is the same processor for 0 to 60 °C.

Power is 9 to 36 V DC on a 2-pin terminal block. The AL053-TC-E3950 is fanless, operates from -40 to 85 °C with storage from -40 to 85 °C, and ships with a heat spreader, with heatsinks available as options. fTPM 2.0 and a watchdog timer programmable from 1 to 255 seconds are built in. The board measures 100 x 72 mm, boots in UEFI mode only and supports Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 64-bit and Linux. It carries CE and FCC marks.