DFI CS331 Intel Xeon E and Coffee Lake Core Micro-ATX Embedded Motherboards with C246 or Q370 Chipset

When a machine needs a frame grabber, a motion card and a fieldbus card in the same small enclosure, the slot layout decides the board. The DFI CS331 series is a Micro-ATX embedded motherboard on a 244 x 244 mm footprint with four PCIe Gen3 slots: two x16 slots that run as one x16 or two x8, and two x4 slots, all on an LGA1151 socket for 8th and 9th Gen Intel Core processors.

The socket takes Core i7-8700, i5-8500 and i3-8100 at 65 W or in 35 W T versions, the 9th Gen embedded Core i7-9700TE, i5-9500E, i5-9500TE, i3-9100E and i3-9100TE, plus dual-core Pentium G5400 and Celeron G4900. DDR4 runs at 2400 or 2666 MHz across four DIMM slots. Intel UHD Graphics drives HDMI, DVI-D and DP++ as three independent displays, with hardware HEVC, VP8 and VP9 encode and decode, and Intel AMT runs on the I219LM port. DFI lists Windows 10 IoT Enterprise and Linux support.

The CS331-C246NRM uses the Intel C246 chipset, which adds Xeon E-2124G, E-2176G, E-2226GE and E-2278GEL processors up to 80 W, ECC memory with Xeon E, Core i3, Pentium and Celeron, up to 64 GB and six SATA 3.0 ports. The CS331-Q370NRM uses the Q370 chipset with Core, Pentium and Celeron only, non-ECC memory up to 128 GB and five SATA 3.0 ports, for systems that need more memory rather than Xeon or ECC.

Both boards have an M.2 M-key socket for PCIe x4 Gen3 NVMe SSDs in 2242, 2260 or 2280 sizes, a full-size Mini PCIe slot and RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. The rear panel carries two USB 3.1 Gen 2, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 and two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, two GbE ports on Intel I219LM and I210AT controllers, an RS-232/422/485 DB-9 and a PS/2 port, and headers add two USB 3.1 Gen 2, four USB 2.0, a second RS-232/422/485, two RS-232 ports and 8-bit digital I/O.

Power comes from a standard ATX supply over 24-pin and 8-pin connectors, and an active CPU cooler keeps the boards within 0 to 60 °C in indoor cabinets, racks and test stations. A watchdog timer programmable from 1 to 255 seconds or minutes supports unattended operation, TPM is available as an ordering option, and the CS331 series carries CE, FCC, RoHS and KCC compliance.