How to choose a motherboard for industrial PCs
Compared to commercial motherboards, industrial PC motherboards must be carefully chosen to meet the high criteria of reliability, longevity, and durability. Industrial motherboards are used for the control of industrial processes and for the data capture of entire production systems: malfunctions and incompatibilities can lead to considerable problems.
Motherboards for industrial PCs are designed for harsh environments, typical of industry and technical laboratories: higher temperature ranges, resistance to vibration and electrical noise, stability and power of components, specific form factors, customized power supply, and cooling systems.
The main features for choosing a motherboard for industrial use include:
- Form Factor: motherboard size, or form factor. The standard ranges from ATX boards (305×244 mm) to micro ATX (244×244 mm), as well as the more recent mini ITX (170×170 mm);
- Socket: a component that identifies the compatibility of the motherboard with the CPU processor to be installed (e.g. Intel Core i3, i5, i7, or i9 series);
- Chipset: a set of circuits that defines the operation and connections of the integrated components on the motherboard, coordinating the passage of data between the CPU, RAM, disk, and peripherals;
- DIMM or SODIMM modules: a slot for managing the RAM modules of the industrial PCs;
- On-board peripherals, expansion buses, and connection ports: modules integrated on the motherboard, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi; buses for connecting internal and external components, such as PCI and PCI Express slots; and connection ports such as USB, Ethernet, and audio and video inputs.
The Digimax motherboard range for industrial use
Digimax has ATX motherboards, mini ITX, and mini ATX motherboards with all types of CPUs on the market: Intel ATOM, Core 2 DUO, Core 2 QUAD up to industrial motherboard solutions with Intel i3, i5, i7, or i9 processors.
Thanks to the experience it has developed, Digimax can offer a wide choice of industrial motherboards subdivided according to the numerous characteristics typically required by the market:
- Number of serial ports;
- Design fanless;
- Provision for the use of watchdog timers;
- LVDS video technology, GPIO peripherals, I2C bus expansion...
In addition, thanks to Digimax's technical staff and laboratory, you can benefit from assistance and advice in the customized installation and configuration of industrial motherboards within industrial rack cases or industrial embedded PC systems.