Boxx is claiming that the newly announced APEXX 5 is the world's most advanced workstation. The system allows demanding users to configure their workstation with up to 36 processor cores and five GPUs. The APEXX 5 is designed with expandability in mind giving users choice in processors, memory, SSDs, and more.
Competing in the same workstation space as the Dell Precision T5810 Workstation ($2,660 £1,700, AU$3,200) and the HP Z840 ($2,399, £1,483, AU$2,575), the liquid-cooled $10,418 (£6,740, AU$13,355) APEXX 5 comes with slots for up to seven expansion cards.
The APEXX 5 is targeted at architects, engineers, or visualization professionals who need enhanced processing and graphics performance.
BOXX positions itself as a solutions provider and systems manufacturer for the VFX, film and television, game development, architecture and engineering, product design, simulation, higher education, government and defense, science and medical and general business industries. The company counts Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, LucasFilm, Major League Baseball, HBO, Pixar, Rockstar Game, Sony Computer Entertainment, Johns Hopkins University Medical, and numerous universities and hospitals as some of its clients.
Configurations
The APEXX 5 can be outfitted with dual Intel Xeon 2600v3 Haswell processors supporting up to 36 cores (72 threads) of processing power.
The APEXX 5 is marketed as a five-GPU system that can handle a dedicated viewport GPU, up to an NVIDIA Quadro K2200, coupled with four coprocessors. Users can configure their workstations with the NVIDIA Quadro K6000s, NVIDIA Tesla, Intel Xeon Phi, or AMD FirePro W9100 cards as coprocessor options.
BOXX claims that the APEXX 5 has the most expansion slots of any professional workstation with seven bays.
APEXX 5 includes four full x16 PCI-E 3.0 expansion slots, (1) PCI-E 2.0 x8 (x4 electrical), (1) PCI-E 3.0 x16 (x8 electrical), (1) PCI-E x8 (x8 electrical), along with eight full-size hard drives.
In addition to these options, users can fill three more expansion cards with either a Synch card for frame lock, PCI-Express SSDs, and 10 GB Ethernet.
Pricing
Base pricing for the APEXX 5 with dual 3.5 GHz Xeon processors, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 1 NVDIA K5200, 240 GB SSD, 20X dual-layer DVD RW optical drive, and Windows 7 starts at $10,418 (£6,740, AU$13,355).
Typical workstations are priced between $2,000 (£1,299, AU$3,999) and $4000 (£2,590, AU$5,125). For comparison, Apple's Mac Pro with quad-core CPU and dual GPU comes in at $3000 (£2,499 AU$3,999).
- Check out TechRadar Pro's picks for the best enterprise workstations.
