MSI's MS-C913 Packs Your Choice of NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano, NX Module in a Rugged Fanless Case

MSI has unveiled a cased carrier board for the NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and Orin NX system-on-module family, to offer industrial-grade edge machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) in a compact footprint — and with entirely passive cooling.

"[The] MS-C913 [is a] compact-size box PC with NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano/NX AI computing platform," MSI explains of its creation, a square-format metal-encased PC with ridged cooling fins in its upper surface, "with ultra low-power fanless solution."

Inside the metal chassis, brought to our attention by Linux Gizmos and designed to double as a passive heatsink for the hardware inside, is a carrier board designed to accept either an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano or Orin NX system-on-module. As a result, specifications vary: when fitted with the entry-level Jetson Orin Nano board, the device will have a six-core Arm Cortex-A78AE processor running at up to 1.5GHz, an Orin graphics processor capable of delivering up to 20 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute for sparse workloads, and 4GB of 64-bit LPDDR5 memory; the top-end Jetson Orin NX, meanwhile, comes with an eight-core processor running at up to 2GHz, a GPU pushing a claimed 100 TOPS for sparse workloads, and 16GB of 128-bit LPDDR5 memory.

In all cases, the module runs without active cooling — relying on a direct thermal connection to the top of the case to bleed off excess heat. Elsewhere on the carrier board are dual gigabit Ethernet ports, powered by a Broadcom BCM5720 chip, an HDMI video output, an Infineon SLB9670VQ Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM 2.0), four USB 3.2 Gen. 2 ports, a single micro-USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) port, a serial port selectable from RS232, RS422, and RS485, and a nine-pin D-sub connector for general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins with another D-sub for CAN bus connectivity. There are spaces for four optional SMA connectors, too, for external antennas.

Those connectors, though, go nowhere by default: there's no integrated wireless connectivity. Instead, MSI's carrier board offers a trio of M.2 slots for optional add-ons: an M.2 E-key slot with PCI Express and UART serial connectivity, ready for 2230-footprint boards; an M.2 B-key with USB 3.0, compatible with 3242-footprint boards; and an M.2 M-key with PCI Express, good for 2280-footprint boards. Everything is powered by a 19V DC power brick, external to the compact case itself.

Pricing and availability for the MS-C913 have yet to be confirmed, with more information available on the MSI website.