DFI WL173 Intel 8th Gen Core Whiskey Lake Mini-ITX SBCs with 9 to 36 V DC Input and Wide Temperature Options

A wide-range DC input lets one board design run from a 12 V or a 24 V supply, which simplifies a product that ships into vehicles, machines and cabinets with different power. The DFI WL173 series combines a 9 to 36 V DC input, on a barrel connector or 4-pin header, with 8th Gen Intel Core (Whiskey Lake) U-series processors on a 170 x 170 mm Mini-ITX board, so it fits standard Mini-ITX mounting without a separate DC-DC converter.

Every WL173 board takes two DDR4 SO-DIMMs for up to 32 GB, at 2400 MHz on the Core builds and 2133 MHz on the Celeron. Intel UHD Graphics drives three independent displays: two rear DP++ outputs at up to 4096 x 2304 at 60 Hz and a dual-channel LVDS header at up to 1920 x 1200 for a driver or operator panel. Networking is two GbE ports on Intel I210AT and I219LM controllers.

The two NE builds are rated from -20 to 70 °C and support Intel vPro and AMT on the I219LM port: WL173-NE-8665UE with the quad-core Core i7-8665UE at up to 4.4 GHz for image handling and heavier HMIs, and WL173-NE-8365UE with the quad-core Core i5-8365UE at up to 4.1 GHz for managed gateways and machine HMIs. The NB builds run from -5 to 65 °C without vPro: WL173-NB-8145UE with the dual-core Core i3-8145UE at up to 3.9 GHz, and WL173-NB-4305UE with the dual-core Celeron 4305UE at a fixed 2.0 GHz.

Four rear USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports at 10 Gbps and four internal USB 2.0 headers cover cameras, drives and peripherals. Two COM ports on internal headers (one RS-232/422/485, one RS-232) and 8-bit DIO reach field devices. An M.2 M-key (2242/2260/2280) with PCIe x4 takes an NVMe SSD, two SATA 3.0 ports support RAID 0, 1 and 5, an M.2 E-key (2230) takes Wi-Fi, and a PCIe x4 Gen3 slot takes a capture, fieldbus or I/O card.

The boards carry a discrete TPM 2.0 and a watchdog programmable from 1 to 255 seconds, with support for Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 64-bit and Linux, including Yocto. For a fixed 12 V supply, the WL171 series uses the same board design with a 12 V DC input.