Tidy little solid state unit aimed at DS market

July 26, 2008 by Dave Haynes

Taiwanese industrial PC maker Acrosser has some up with a nice little fanless and potentially full solid state box aimed at the digital signage marketplace.

The thing is 6.5 by 10 by 2.5 inches, also known as pretty small, and at least looks pretty rugged.

Acrosser announced an embedded system capable of running Intel’s 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo fanlessly. Targeting digital signage and vehicular applications, the AR-ES5430FL features an aluminum case with advanced heat pipe technology, four serial ports, dual LAN ports, plus DVI, LVDS, VGA and S-Video outputs, says Acrosser (found on WindowsforDevices.com)

Like other designs including the recently announced APC-3×17 panel PC from Datasound Laboratories, the AR-ES5430FL tackles the issue of adapting relatively inexpensive, but hot-running, processors to use in passively cooled embedded devices. In this case, it’s Intel’s long-life Core 2 Duo T7400, a 65nm CPU that runs at 2.16GHz.

This processor’s 34 Watt TDP would normally disqualify it from fanless operation, but Acrosser has provided its computer with an aluminum chassis, integral heat sink, and a “high technology heat pipe thermal module.” Thus, claims the company, the device can operate with no problems in operating temperatures from 0 to 50 deg. C, when it is equipped with Compact Flash storage. With a 2.5 hard disk drive fitted instead, operating range is 0 to 45 deg. C.

The AR-ES5430FL is also available with Intel’s 2GHz Core Duo T2500, and with Celeron M 530 and M 540 processors, running at 1.73GHz and 1.86GHz, respectively. All configurations come with a standard 512MB of DDR2 RAM, expandable to 2GB via a single SO-DIMM socket.

The device comes with Intel’s 945GME northbridge and ICH7M southbridge, and it offers integrated GMA950 graphics. Four different video interfaces include analog VGA, DVI, an S-Video TV output, and a dual 18-bit LVDS interface that has a DB25 connector and “LCD backlight inverter control.”

The box also sports dual gigabit Ethernet connectors, with R45 connectors, via a Broadcom BCM5787 controller. In addition, it provides four USB ports (two internal, two external), PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports, and four serial ports.

Inside, there’s room for an anti-shock mounted 2.5-hard disk drive (optional), a Compact Flash socket for an SSD (solid state disk, also optional), and a PCI-104 expansion interface. The AR-ES5430FL has a 44-pin box header for an IDE interface, plus a SATA-2 port.

  1. Eric says:

    Any idea on cost? I’m guessing $1000-2000…

  2. J. Green says:

    I went to their website, clicked on embedded products to learn more about this thing and a Malware virus started up. Nice

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