An Industrial PC is a rugged PC that can be either a Rackmount System or a Shoebox/Wallmount system depending on the application. Industrial PCs offer a higher temperature operating range than normal PCs along with shock mounted drives, forced air cooling (if required), card clamps to protect against vibration and lockable controls.

Having decided on which system would best suit the application the user can decide on what size of chassis to select.

Rackmount Chassis are normally available in 2U, 4U or 6U format and the choice of which to use is generally dictated by the number of Slots (ISA/PCI) required and the media storage needed.

Shoebox/Wallmount Chassis are offered in various sizes depending on the number of Slots (ISA/PCI) needed for the application and whether a Full Size or Half Size CPU board is to be used.
A range of different backplanes offer the choice of bus to be used (ISA, PICMG, PCI or PISA) and various combinations of slots for plugging in add-on I/O boards allows users to build systems to their requirement.

Backplanes should be selected in conjunction with the Slot CPU that best supports the application requirements - particular consideration should be paid to the processor speed and I/O functionality. CPUs generally fall into three categories, Full Size with PICMG interface, Half Size with ISA, PCI or PISA interfaces and Industrial ATX motherboards.

Customers have the choice of selecting the component parts from the Eltech website and ordering the individual items to construct the system themselves or alternatively have the system configured by Eltech and take delivery of a complete 'ready to run' system with an Operating System (Windows, Linux, etc..) pre-loaded.