How can an industrial PC that's tough and rugged and adheres to numerous standards be this small? By not needing a fan, not using bulky rotating media, having an external notebook-type power supply, and by using an embedded Mitac-sourced Mini-ITX board instead of a full size ATX personal computer motherboard.

The Mini-ITX form factor has been around since 2001 and specifies a 170 x 170 mm (6.7 x 6.7 inches) low-power board. It was originally intended primarily for entry-level platforms and industrial applications. But since — unlike some more exotic board types — Mini-ITX boards fit into generic computer cases and use standard screw-mount patterns, they turned out to be perfect for many other custom applications where standard PC functionality needed to fit into a small space.

As a result, despite its amazingly compact size, the orange Logic Supply ML210G is a full-function PC. It runs standard or embedded versions of Windows 7 or 8.1 on a 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Celeron J1900 processor.

The J1900 is part of Intel's large "Bay Trail" family that includes Atom, Celeron and even Pentium branded chips. That's a bit confusing as Intel has traditionally used the Celeron brand largely for its barest entry level processors. That's not the case here. While all "Bay Trail" chips are based on a heavily overhauled Intel Atom architecture, they now include GPUs that use the same Intel execution units (EUs) as Ivy Bridge's HD 4000. This gives them support for most of the same APIs and features — DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.0 (and OpenGL ES 3.0 on mobile, provided the drivers support it), and OpenCL 1.2 support are all present on the API side, as is dual-display support.

So the quad-core Celeron J1900 processor powering Logic Supply's orange IPC packs far more of a punch than earlier chips in fanless packages, even though its thermal design power is just 10 watts, less than that of even ultra-low voltage mobile Intel Core processors.

The ML210G, like most industrial PCs, is simple and straight-forward, a precision-engineered piece of computing machinery of high quality. The design is rational down to the smallest detail. Do note, though, that while the ML210G doesn't have a fan or ventilation slots, it is not a sealed unit an doesn't claim to be.

The picture below shows the system from the front (top) and from the rear (bottom). The front is simple, with just the power button and two USB 2.0 ports. There are two additional cut-outs for expansion such as extra legacy serial ports.

Most of the I/O is concentrated on the backside of the device. Our review ML210G was configured to offer the following external ports:

• 2 x USB 2.0
• 2 x USB 3.0
• 15-pin VGA video
• 1 x RJ-45 gigabit LAN
• 2 x Antenna WiFi
• 1 x HDMI
• Power (8 to 19 Volt DC)
• Audio line-in and line-out

While the ML210G is has the capability to run off pretty much any SATA mass storage device, Logic Supply designed the unit specifically for use with an mSATA solid state disk using a mini-PCIe connector. Our review unit ran Windows 8.1 on a 120GB Samsung SSD 840 EVO with a SATA 6Gb/s interface.

The interior of the Logic Supply ML210G is very simple. The top and bottom separate easily upon undoing three small Philips head screws. The Mitac PD10BI Thin Mini-ITX Motherboard is mounted onto the steel lower half of the housing, with edge-mount connectivity fitting into the cutouts of the case. Note that the Mitac mini-ITX motherboard itself has additional connectivity that systems integrators can tap into for their projects. For information on that, check the Mitac PD10BI Thin Mini-ITX Motherboard with Intel Bay Trail page on Logic Supply's website.

Mini-ITX Systems Benchmarks and Comparisons

PERFORMANCE COMPARISON	Logic Supply	Advantech	Advantech	Advantech
Model	ML210G	ARK-1122	AIMB-201	ARK-DS520
Model (click pic for review)
Year tested	2014	2013	2013	2012
Intel processor	Celeron J1900	Atom N2800	Core i3-3210ME	Atom N455
Cores/threads	4/4	2/4	2/4	1/2
CPU base speed	2.00GHz	1.86GHz	2.40GHz	1.60GHz
CPU turbo speed	2.41GHz	no turbo	no turbo	1.60GHz
Thermal Design Power (TDP)	10.0 watts	6.5 watts	35 watts	2.5 watts
CPU Mark	2,450.0	546.1	2,182.4	248.7
2D Graphics Mark	189.0	NA	323.5	71.3
Memory Mark	603.0	254.3	660.3	220.4
Disk Mark	2,498.8	948.2	181.4	445.9
3D Graphics Mark	163.1	57.0	230.7	169.1
Overall PassMark	1,316.0	389.7	817.4	226.3
CM ALU	32,400	11,474	38,206	6,296
CM FPU	27,785	9,003	36,977	4,033
CM MEM	28,490	8,757	22,673	6,033
CM HDD	37,383	25,739	7,184	7,827
CM GDI	5,958	1,271	9,558	2,302
CM D2D	3,685	370	1,849	2,936
CM OGL	3,951	8,016	5,169	5,183
Overall CrystalMark	139,652	64,630	121,616	34,610

The results show three things:

• First, the quad-core Celeron J1900 Logic Supply picked for their ML210G industrial PC packs a serious punch. Although based on a heavily revised Atom processor architecture, the J1900 provides near Core processor performance in most respects, but in a much more economical package.

• Second, this Bay Trail-based system performs at a much higher level than anything based on earlier Intel Atom processors.

• Third, though Bay Trail uses Ivy Bridge-class Intel HD Graphics, it's a simpler and slower implementation, so if high-end graphics are needed, a Haswell-based system is a better choice.

• And fourth, the type of solid state storage chose for a particular system can make a huge performance difference (as evidenced by the excellent numbers produced by the ML210G's Samsung mSATA module).

ThinManager

The optionally available ML210G-10-TR version of the device features an ACP-enabled ThinManager BIOS that provides a reliable, economical fanless thin client virtualization solution.

And, of course, we love the orange case -- Conrad H. Blickenstorfer, December 2014

Logic Supply ML210G PC Specs: