Fanless industrial PCs are compact computers specifically designed for industrial environments. They can be flexibly applied in harsh environments with limited temperature and space requirements, including applications in automotive, medical, surveillance, factory control, and vision systems where low power consumption is a requirement. The main differences between fanless industrial PCs and traditional industrial PCs lie in their structure and functionality.
Structural differences
Traditional industrial PCs use a combination of a 4U type cold-rolled steel chassis, a gold-finger motherboard (full-length or half-length card), a baseboard, and a high-power power supply.
Such a structure may contain some unstable factors:
1. Poor contact when inserting the CPU card into the circuit board, such as due to vibration, loosening during transportation, or oxidation of the gold fingers, can prevent the computer from booting.
2. Some ATX signal cables are needed to connect the baseboard and the CPU card.
3. The CPU card is powered by the backplane. When the backplane has a problem, it will affect the CPU card and prevent it from receiving power, resulting in system instability (such as an unreasonable design of the backplane power supply circuit). The CPU is externally plugged in (PGA package), which poses a risk to the connection and requires a fan for heat dissipation. The connection between the fan and the CPU and its lifespan are the biggest safety hazards.
4. Excessive power consumption of the power supply necessitates a fan for cooling. A malfunctioning fan can damage both the power supply and the motherboard.
5. The CPU card + motherboard structure will cause trouble for the assembly process (it will take a lot of time, as the motherboard must be installed before the CPU card is installed), which will affect work efficiency and is not conducive to a large number of assembly tasks.
The fanless industrial computer adopts a combination of an all-aluminum casing, an embedded motherboard, and an external low-power power supply.
advantage:
1. The all-aluminum casing allows for better heat dissipation, and its small size and light weight make it easy to install and carry.
2. It adopts an advanced embedded, low-power CPU motherboard and the latest embedded technology, and integrates related peripheral interfaces on the CPU motherboard, reducing connection problems and avoiding related loosening issues.
3. The embedded CPU motherboard adopts a single +5V or +12V DC power supply and is also equipped with an AC adapter, which makes the on-site power supply options more abundant and the power supply more reliable.
4. Since the CPU of the embedded motherboard adopts BGA (onboard) packaging, there is no need to worry about connection issues. It also adopts a fanless design, which greatly improves reliability and completely solves the problems of insufficient heat dissipation and lifespan of traditional industrial control computers.
5. For customers, installation only requires connecting the hard drive and memory via an external connector, which shortens installation time and improves work efficiency.
In summary, traditional industrial PCs have numerous connecting cables between the CPU card and the backplane or external interfaces, leading to loose or incorrect connections and causing system instability (similar to a fan in a system). Embedded industrial PCs utilize advanced technology to fundamentally solve these problems, resulting in a more stable and streamlined system.
Different in function
Traditional industrial control computers use a CPU card to drive related interface cards on a passive backplane.
Potential risks exist:
1. The signal traces between the CPU card and related peripheral cards are long, resulting in signal attenuation and interference. (This has a greater impact on the high-precision signal acquisition industry).
2. Because peripheral cards need to be plugged into a passive baseboard, the motherboard's driving capability sometimes prevents it from driving more peripheral cards (for example, sometimes a third PC device on the passive baseboard cannot work).
3. Due to the presence of a bridge chip on the baseboard, there is a capacitance issue.
4. Traditional industrial PCs do not have reserved interfaces for more advanced peripherals (such as AGP slots, which cannot meet the requirements for higher display performance, causing inconvenience to customers, who either have to pay higher costs to use PCI graphics cards, or the functions cannot be realized at all).
advantage:
1. It has multiple expansion slots, providing traditional ISA and PCI expansion options.
2. Traditional ISA and PCI devices are inexpensive.
Fanless industrial PCs use embedded motherboards and expansion methods such as PC104 or PCI104.
advantage:
1. Embedded motherboards generally use expansion forms such as PC104 (equivalent to IAS), PCI104 (equivalent to PCI), and MINPCI, which have shorter signal lines, less signal attenuation and interference, and more secure and reliable connections.
2. The PCI and ISA bridge chips are integrated on the motherboard, providing stronger system driver and monitoring capabilities.
3. The embedded motherboard integrates mainstream interfaces such as DIO, TV-OUT, Audio, single or dual network ports, multiple serial ports, and multiple USB ports, providing customers with richer interfaces and making expansion easier and cheaper.
4. The LCD interface is a major feature of embedded motherboards. It allows users to directly connect to an LCD screen, reducing the hassle of A/D conversion and safety risks compared to the traditional VGA mode.
5. It can run not only standard operating systems, but also embedded operating systems such as Windows CE, LINX, and Windows XPE, making the system simpler, faster to start, and more stable, while avoiding system damage caused by unexpected shutdowns.
shortcoming:
1. It has relatively weak scalability and does not provide a traditional ISA interface.
2. Expansion devices such as PC104 are relatively expensive.
In summary, traditional industrial PCs, due to limitations in motherboard driver capabilities and compatibility, can cause inconvenience in practical system applications and increase procurement costs for customers due to the lack of mainstream interfaces. Embedded motherboards, on the other hand, offer a wider range of choices and reduce costs because they provide richer and more mainstream interfaces.
