DFI AL171-CT-E3950 Intel Atom x7-E3950 Mini-ITX SBC with Dual GbE and -40 to 85 °C

Outdoor ticket machines, charging-point displays and station information screens need a responsive front end in a cabinet that can freeze in winter and heat up in summer. The AL171-CT-E3950 is the quad-core extended temperature build in the DFI AL171 series of Mini-ITX SBCs, rated from -40 to 85 °C on a 12 V DC input.

Its Intel Atom x7-E3950 (Apollo Lake) runs four cores at 1.6 GHz with bursts to 2.0 GHz inside a 12 W TDP, the most compute available in the series. Two DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMM slots take up to 8 GB. Intel HD Graphics drives three independent displays from VGA, DP++ at up to 4K 60 Hz, dual-channel LVDS and eDP connectors, so the same board can run an LVDS or eDP panel plus a second screen.

Two GbE ports on Intel I211IT and I210IT controllers, matched to the temperature rating, separate a device network from the uplink. Six COM ports on internal headers (two RS-232/422/485, four RS-232) and 8-bit DIO handle card readers, printers and door or lamp control. Four rear USB 3.0 ports and five internal USB 2.0 connections, two SATA 3.0 ports, an M.2 B-key for an SSD or cellular module, full-size Mini PCIe and a PCIe x1 Gen2 slot complete the I/O.

The AL171-CT-E3950 runs from 12 V DC on a barrel connector or 4-pin header and operates fanless across -40 to 85 °C, with CE, FCC, RoHS and UL compliance. For a lower heat load at the same rating, AL171-CT-E3930 uses the dual-core 6.5 W Atom x5-E3930. If the unit stays indoors, AL171-CB-E3950 carries the same processor for 0 to 60 °C.