DFI AL170-CT-E3940 Quad-Core Intel Atom x5-E3940 Industrial Mini-ITX Motherboard with Dual GbE and -40 to 85 °C

Outdoor kiosks, ticket machines and transport cabinets need enough compute for a responsive screen and a few background services, but every watt adds heat inside a sealed box. The AL170-CT-E3940 sits in the middle of the extended temperature builds in the DFI AL170 series of industrial Mini-ITX motherboards: four cores at 9.5 W, rated from -40 to 85 °C.

The Intel Atom x5-E3940 (Apollo Lake) runs its four cores at 1.6 GHz with bursts to 1.8 GHz. That suits a kiosk front end, a ticketing application and remote management running together without the 12 W of the x7-E3950. Memory is two DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMMs for up to 8 GB, and Intel HD Graphics drives VGA, a DP++ output at up to 4K 60 Hz and dual-channel LVDS as three independent displays.

Networking is two GbE ports on Intel I210IT controllers. Two rear DB9 ports configurable for RS-232, RS-422 or RS-485, four internal RS-232 headers and 8-bit DIO handle card readers, printers and door or lamp control. There are four rear USB 3.0 ports and six internal USB 2.0 headers, two SATA 3.0 ports, an M.2 M-key for a PCIe or SATA SSD, a full-size Mini PCIe slot for wireless and a PCIe x1 Gen2 slot.

Power is a standard ATX supply on the 24-pin connector, and the AL170-CT-E3940 runs fanless across -40 to 85 °C with a watchdog to recover an unattended system. For more headroom at the same temperature rating, AL170-CT-E3950 steps up to the 12 W x7-E3950. Where the unit stays indoors, AL170-CB-E3940 uses the same processor at 0 to 60 °C with two DP++ outputs and LVDS.