Supermicro SYS-E302-12E Fanless Industrial PC Review: Elkhart Lake for IoT Applications

Setup Notes and Platform Analysis

Our review sample of the Supermicro SYS-E302-12E came with all necessary components pre-installed - we only had to load up the OS to start our evaluation process. Prior to that, we took some time to look into the BIOS interface. It must be noted that traditional out-of-band management options like a dedicated BMC LAN port or even AMT are not available for the system. The COM ports have some out-of-band management options, but that is quite limited compared to BMC / AMT. Additionally, the board's jumpers are set by default to disable TPM. So, the jumper (JPT1) must be altered to allow Windows 11 to be installed. The BIOS has plenty of other configuration options that are brought out in the video below.

The block diagram below presents the overall high-speed I/O distribution.

Since the Elkhart Lake processor is a SoC, the DMI link details between the internal PCH and the CPU are not readily available. While not much can be commented on the bandwidth allocations due to this, we do see that both USB 2.0 header pairs are brought out as Type-A ports using the thick white cables in the picture below. We also see the COM header pairs getting connected to the RS232 ports.

Access to the internal board is obtained by unscrewing the chassis from the sides and the top and pulling it up. It is necessary to do this in order to install the SODIMMs and M.2 / 2.5" drives in the case of a barebones system.

In today's review, we compare the Supermicro SYS-E302-12E and a host of other systems based on processors with TDPs ranging from 6 W to 35 W. The systems do not target the same market segments, but a few key aspects lie in common, making the comparisons relevant.

The OnLogic HX500 represents a premium fanless industrial PC with a 35W TDP processor. The Atlas Canyon NUC (based on a Jasper Lake SoC) makes an appearance as a representative of the best possible performance from the Tremont stable, while the Zotac CI331 nano makes up the low end (6W TDP SoC in a fanless configuration). The next few sections will deal with comparative benchmarks for the above systems.