DFI CMS171-Q470E Intel 10th Gen Core Mini-ITX Embedded Motherboard with Q470E Chipset, Dual LAN and 12 V DC Input

A vision or inspection PC can run out of USB ports quickly: two or three industrial cameras, a barcode scanner, a label printer and an external drive already fill most Mini-ITX boards. The CMS171-Q470E is the board in the DFI CMS171 series of Mini-ITX embedded motherboards, and it puts 12 USB 3.2 ports on the rear panel of a socketed 10th Gen Core board powered from 12 V DC.

The LGA1200 socket on the Intel Q470E chipset takes 10th Gen Intel Core i9, i7, i5 and i3 processors, from four to ten cores, plus two-core Pentium G6400E and Celeron G5900E and G5900TE parts, at up to 65 W TDP. A 65 W Core i7 or i9 E processor gives headroom for image processing across several cameras, and a 35 W TE version suits a smaller enclosure. Two DDR4 2933 MHz SO-DIMMs hold up to 64 GB, and Intel UHD Graphics drives two DP++ outputs at 4K with hardware HEVC and VP9 decode.

Eight of the rear USB ports are USB 3.2 Gen 2 and four more are USB 3.2. Two GbE ports use an Intel I219LM, with Intel vPro and AMT on vPro-capable processors, and an Intel I211AT. One RS-232/422/485 port sits on a DB9 at the rear and a second on an internal header, with 8-bit DIO. The M.2 M-key runs NVMe at PCIe Gen3 x4 or SATA, the B-key takes an LTE or 5G module with its SIM holder, and the E-key takes Wi-Fi 6 with Intel CNVi. Two SATA 3.0 ports support RAID 0 and 1, and a PCIe x16 slot with x8 Gen3 signaling takes a frame grabber or network card.

The CMS171-Q470E runs from 12 V DC on a DC jack and operates from -5 to 65 °C, a standard indoor range, with CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance, an optional Infineon TPM and a watchdog programmable from 1 to 255 seconds. DFI lists Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019 and Ubuntu 20.04. Where the enclosure runs from a 24 V supply, the CMS173 is the same board with a 15 to 36 V DC input.