DFI CS551 Intel 8th and 9th Gen Core 3.5" SBCs with C246, Q370 or H310 Chipset and Wide Temperature Options

Machine builders who want socketed Intel Core performance in a small enclosure often have to choose between a soldered processor they cannot change and a Mini-ITX board that will not fit. The DFI CS551 series puts an LGA1151 socket on a 146 x 102 mm 3.5″ SBC, so one board design can carry anything from a dual-core Celeron to an eight-core Core i7, chosen to suit each machine’s workload and heat budget.

The socket takes 8th and 9th Gen Intel Core T and TE processors (Coffee Lake): the Core i7-9700TE with eight cores, the Core i7-8700T, i5-8500T and i5-9500TE with six, the Core i3-8100T and i3-9100TE with four, and the dual-core Pentium G5400T and Celeron G4900T, all at 35 W TDP. One DDR4 2666 MHz SO-DIMM takes up to 32 GB. Intel UHD Graphics 630 drives two DP++ outputs at up to 4096 x 2304 at 60 Hz and dual-channel LVDS at up to 1920 x 1200 as three independent displays. A firmware TPM 2.0 and a watchdog timer are included, and DFI lists Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 64-bit and Linux.

Six builds combine three chipsets with two temperature grades. The C246 builds, CS551-C246-BCA and CS551-C246-ECA, add ECC memory support with the Core i3, Pentium and Celeron processors DFI names, alongside four USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports and an M.2 socket with PCIe x4. The Q370 builds, CS551-Q370-BCA and CS551-Q370-ECA, keep the Gen 2 USB and PCIe x4 M.2 without ECC. The H310 builds, CS551-H310-BCA and CS551-H310-ECA, have four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and a PCIe x1 M.2 socket. BCA builds run from -5 to 65 °C with 35 W processors; ECA builds are the wide temperature versions, rated -30 to 80 °C with the processor set to a 15 W TDP-down and a 12 V heater header.

Every board has two GbE ports on Intel I211AT or I210IT controllers, one SATA 3.0 port beside the M.2 M-key 2280 socket, and a full-size mini PCIe socket with an optional SIM slot for a Wi-Fi or 4G module. Headers carry two USB 2.0 ports, one RS-232/422/485 port, 8-bit DIO and Realtek ALC262 audio.

Power is 12 V DC on a 4-pin connector, with a barrel jack on request, and the series carries CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance. Cooling is a fanless heatsink as standard, with a cooler fan as an option.