Thin Mini-ITX SBC serves up Tiger Lake, dual 2.5GbE, and USB 4

Thin Mini-ITX SBC serves up Tiger Lake, dual 2.5GbE, and USB 4

Jan 8, 2021 — by Eric Brown

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IEI’s “tKINO-UL6” is a thin Mini-ITX board with a 11th Gen Tiger Lake ULP3 CPU, quad 4K display support, dual 2.5GbE, dual M.2, PCIe x8 Gen4, 4x USB 3.2 Gen2, and a USB 4 port.

The tKINO-UL6 is the second thin Mini-ITX board we have seen based on Intel’s 10nm fabricated 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors, following ASRock’s IMB-1224. It is also the second Tiger Lake SBC with a USB 4 port after Aaeon’s community-backed UP Xtreme i11. IEI’s more industrial focused board offers -20 to 60°C support and a 9-36V DC input.

tKINO-UL6 and detail view
(click images to enlarge)

Like ASRock’s IMB-1224, the tKINO-UL6 supports 4x simultaneous 4K displays, and it supplies dual 2.5GbE ports instead of one. Unlike the IMB-1224, it provides up to 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen2 ports on the coastline, as well as the USB 4 Type-C port.

USB 4 (AKA USB4, USB 4.0, or Thunderbolt 4) supports a minimum of 20Gbps throughput and a maximum of 40Gbps. USB 4 features dynamic bandwidth sharing for “more efficient sharing between data and display protocols,” says IEI. USB 4 certification is also pending on ASRock’s 4×4 NUC-1185G7E Tiger Lake SBC.

Like the ASRock boards and the UP Xtreme i11, IEI’s Mini-ITX SBC supports the more embedded Tiger Lake ULP “E” Core and Celeron variants, which we covered in this report on Adlink’s cExpress-TL module. The 11th Gen “E” models offer extended purchase availability and slightly lower base and Turbo frequencies than their similarly named standard ULP3 siblings.

The dual- and quad-core models supplied here are led by the up to 4.4GHz (Turbo) Core i7-1185G7E. No OS support was listed, but Linux and Windows are almost certainly supported.

The tKINO-UL6 can load up to 64GB DDR4-3200 and provides dual SATA III interfaces with SATA power. SATA is also available on the M.2 M-key 2242/2280 slot. For more expansion, there is an M.2 A-key 2230 with PCIe x1 and USB 2.0, and a PCIe x8 slot (x4 signal) that exploits Tiger Lake’s support for PCIe Gen4.

Quadruple 4K displays can run at once with HDMI 2.0b and dual DP 1.4a, one of which is available via the USB 4 Type-C port. There is also a 4K-ready eDP port that can be switched by customers to LVDS. A Realtek ALC888S HD Audio codec drives an audio I/O jack and a front audio header.

The dual 2.5GbE ports are powered by Intel I225V controllers. Other coastline ports include the 4x USB 3.1 Gen2 ports and the USB 4 Type-C.

Internal connectors include 4x USB 2.0, 4x RS-232, and single RS-232/422/485, RS-422/485, I2C, SMBus, KB/MS, front panel, 8-bit DIO, and CPU and system fan connectors. Other features include Super I/O, LEDs, watchdog, chassis intrusion detection, and a TPM header with optional TPM 2.0 chip.

The tKINO-UL6’s 9-36V input is available via a coastline jack and an internal connector. Power draw for the high-end i7-1185G7E with 16GB RAM is [email protected].

Further information

No pricing or availability information was provided for the tKINO-UL6. More information may be found in IEI Integration Corp’s announcement and product page.