Cincoze DS-1300 Industrial PC Review: Xeon-Powered Do-it-All

Industrial PCs are meant for 24x7 deployment in a wide range of environments. This brings in a host of requirements that are often disregarded by traditional consumer PCs - wide operating temperature range, ruggedness, regulatory requirements, support for specific I/O types, etc. Most industrial PCs are passively cooled, with the absence of moving parts contributing to better reliability. In certain cases, processing power requirements and space constraints make it necessary to include active cooling.

Cincoze is a provider of long life-cycle computing systems for use in demanding industrial and embedded applications. In the North American market, their systems are sold by OnLogic. Rugged embedded fanless PCs make up one of their leading product lines, with the DS series being the flagship. The DS-1300 series based on Intel's Comet Lake offerings are the latest in this family.

The DS-1300 series comes in three flavors with varying support for add-on cards. The choice of processor and add-in cards are factors influencing the choice of active or passive cooling for the system. The review below provides a detailed look into the features and performance profile of the Cincoze DS-1302 - the DS-1300 series member equipped with a dual-slot NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 and active cooling.

Introduction and Product Impressions

Cincoze's DS-1300 series of rugged fanless PCs target the industrial PC market, where reliability and hardiness are key requirements along with long component life cycles and ease of servicing. While the series of systems is primarily fanless, the design can accommodate external fans for cooling the CPU (when TDP is more than 35W). Internal fans for add-in cards such as GPUs are also supported.

Processors meant for the embedded market make it to end customers much later than their consumer counterparts. Cincoze's Comet Lake offering (DS-1300 series) made it to the market late last year. Based on the Intel W480E chipset, these systems come in three varieties - the vanilla DS-1300 doesn't include any PCIe add-on cards support. The DS-1301 includes support for a single PCIe x16 add-in card, while the DS-1302 supports two add-in cards (or, one dual slot add-in card) in either PCIe x16 + PCIe x1 or PCIe x8 + PCIe x8 configurations.

The Cincoze DS-1300 Series - DS-1300, DS-1301, and DS-1302 (from Top to Bottom)

The DS-1300 series can also be customized with CMI (combined multiple I/O) modules based on deployment requirements. Typical CMI modules include ones with quad RJ-45 GbE LAN ports, dual RJ-45 10GBASE-T ports, quad M12 GbE LAN ports, various combinations of serial ports and digital I/Os, etc.

The DS-1302 review sample provided by Cincoze included an Intel Xeon W-1270E octa-core processor, 64GB of DDR4 SODIMMs, a 512GB M.2 2280 NVMe SSD, a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 add-in card, a CMI-10GLAN03 dual 10GBASE-T module, and a CMI-DIO02 8-input / 8-output digital I/O module pre-installed. Since the system expects DC power input (9-48V) via a 3-pin terminal block, Cincoze also shipped across a Mean Well SDR-480-24 480W external PSU with the appropriate wiring.

The DS-1302 review sample included a 80W TDP processor, a FAN-EX101 external fan compatible with the FAN terminal block of the system was also pre-mounted, as shown in the picture above. The full specifications of the review sample are provided below.

The pricing mentioned in the table above is just the lower bound based on publicly available information. Interested customers can reach out to Cincoze for custom quotes based on their specific requirements.

The Cincoze DS-1302 stands out from previously the industrial PCs reviewed previously by us - such as the OnLogic Helix HX500 and the Shuttle and Habey Kaby Lake units. While those systems were passively cooled and came with sub-35W TDP processors, the Cincoze DS-1302 is actively cooled, and includes an internal fan to keep the temperature of the discrete GPU reasonable. Additionally, the system makes use of multiple custom expansion cards to provide a wide range of I/Os catering to various deployment requirements. The closest we have seen in fanless industrial units are Compulab's FACET cards that we reviewed back in 2016.

The chassis is made of extruded aluminum and is quite massive, with the dGPU-less version coming in at 5.4 Kg. With dimensions of 227mm x 261mm x 128mm, the system is quite hefty compared to the other industrial PCs covered earlier.

Yet another interesting aspect of the Cincoze DS-1300 series is the attention paid to long life-cycle and easier servicing in the field. For example, even the CMOS battery is replaceable by just taking out the front panel, as shown in the gallery below. The pictures in the gallery are from the product manual, and a some of the parts shown in the pictures (such as the riser card for the GPU mounting) are different from the one used in the review sample.

The system also comes with a host of regulatory and ruggedness certificates - MIL-STD-810G for shock and vibration, IEC/EN 62368-1 for safety, ICES-003 Class A for EMC and EN50121-3-2 for usage in railway installations. Overall, this is a truly flexible industrial PC which can be configured and used in either passively-cooled or actively-cooled mode depending on the processing power required.