ARES-1970 Series_Product Review
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Product Review ARBOR ARES-1970 Series Modular approach to high-performance industrial controllers minimizes cost and space requirements, maximizes configuration and application potential.

Fanless embedded controllers are compact computers designed to handle a vast range of tasks behind the scenes. They are variably called box PCs or industrial PCs, and although they are very different from desktop or laptop computers they are based on the same industry standard processors, ports and components, albeit sometimes special or more durable versions of them. These kinds of PCs actually use most of the world's microprocessors to monitor, manage, supervise and control systems and make them work, almost always behind the scenes. Virtually no two such controllers are alike. Their...

mPCIe slot. 8GB of fast, efficient DDR4 RAM is pre-installed, and there's also a 260-pin DDR4 SO-DIMM socket for up to 16GB more. The ARES-1970 is virtually all I/O. There are eight DB9 RS232 serial ports, six USB ports, as well as dual gigabit RJ45 jacks, audio, and VGA and HDMI for video. The expanded ARES-1970-E configuration There are situations where a single mPCIe slot just isn't enough for storage requirements. Or where digital I/O is needed, or additional RJ45 jacks. That's where the ARES-1970-E comes in. It consists of two ARES-1970...

Not available to us for testing yet was the third version of the ARES-1970 line, the ARES-1970-4P/4E. This version, also using two of the ARES-1970 Series heat sink/spreaders, but here they have different dimensions and are not directly mated to each other but serve as end caps of a roughly 8 x 8 x 8 inch cube. What's the extra space used for? That'd be either four PCI or four PCIe expansion boards. PCI, which stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect, has been around for over two decades. PCI cards come in various configurations, heights...

Worth mentioning is the excellent quality of the manuals that come with each version. Each is around 90 pages and explains, describes and illustrates every aspect of the hardware and BIOS firmware. Intel Skylake powered Unlike general purpose PCs where more performance is always better than less, embedded systems are usually designed to handle well-defined, predictable workloads. Equipping such systems with more power than they need would be a waste. Industrial controllers, however, may see a wide range of demanding deployments, requiring...

We didn't include any comparison units, but we still found some facts worth mentioning: First, the performance level achievable with any of the three available processors are substantial. Most embedded systems perform at much lower levels. This is essentially "ready-for-anything" performance. Second, note that the overall bottomline performance of our two test units differs more than one would expect, as they both had the same Core i5 processor. The reason is the significant performance difference between the two types of solid state disks used. The Intel SSD 320 Series 2-1/2-inch drive...

Application potential ARBOR proudly points out that the ARES-1970-E won a "Taiwan Excellence Award 2017" in the High Flexibility Modularized Rugged Box PC category, and after examining two of those unit it's clear that they certainly deserved the recognition. The line convinces with its clever overall design approach, its space-saving modularity, and certainly with its performance. The base ARES-1970 is small enough to fit almost anywhere and offers enough serial ports to communicate with up to eight legacy peripherals and systems. With its side expansion-facilitated digital I/O, dual...