The new APEXX 5 from BOXX Technologies is a highly configurable Multi-CAD/Rendering beast. It was designed to take on large engineering, architectural, VFX, and animation workflows, as well as maximize I/O expandability with up to 7 total expansion cards.
According to Chris Morley, BOXX Product Marketing Manager, “BOXX customers have very specific workflow issues that can only be solved with the proper hardware. So when an architect, engineer, or visualization professional requires the absolute maximum performance to accommodate their particular workflow, APEXX 5 is the only solution.” So what has BOXX produced to back up this claim of “absolute maximum performance?”
The liquid-cooled APEXX 5 can be custom-configured with a multitude of expansion cards, hard drives, memory, and CPU cores. The x86 workstation features Intel® Xeon® 2600v3 processors for up to 36 cores (72 threads) and the most expansion slots of any professional workstation.
APEXX 5 includes simultaneous utilizations of 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. APEXX 5 can also be configured with a vast array of professional expansion cards including a dedicated viewport GPU (up to a NVIDIA® QuadroTM K2200) coupled with four coprocessors or powerful GPUs (up to NVIDIA® QuadroTM K6000s, NVIDIA® TeslaTM, Intel Xeon® PhiTM, or AMD FirePro W9100 cards). Customers can also choose from three additional expansion cards, including a Synch card for frame lock, PCI-Express SSDs, and 10 GB Ethernet.
The APEXX 5 would be well suited for large display applications as well as GPU rendering in V-Ray® RT, NVIDIA® Iray®, Octane Render, or CATIA Live Rendering, or with simulation software like ANSYS, ANSYS Fluent, FluiDyna, and SIMULIA .
“We understand that APEXX 5 addresses a specific market segment and is obviously not for everyone,” says Morley. “With APEXX 5, we're offering configurations once considered impossible.”
BOXX targets three market verticals: Media & Entertainment, Architecture, Engineering & Construction, and Manufacturing & Product Design. Any industry revolving around visualization, engineering, simulation and design workflows would benefit from using the APEXX 5, in my opinion.
The APEXX 5 was made for multi display/projector visualization, multi GPU rendering/computing, and similar applications requiring a powerful array of features. The starting price for the APEXX 5 is $10,500, but configurations can go all the way up to $50,000.
The APEXX 5 supports up to five GPUs—four of them are the fastest and most powerful dual slot GPUs or accelerators available. Among the other features that make this workstation so powerful, the fifth GPU is dedicated to driving display graphics to keep the workstation interactive even if the other four GPUs are fully committed to a rendering or a computing task. In addition to these five GPUs, the APEXX 5 includes an additional two PCI-E slots (available for other add-in cards), plus an additional off motherboard slot to specifically accommodate “GPU accessory boards like a G-Sync board or multiple stereo display outputs.” With up to 6 cores (72 threads) and up to 512MB RAM (plus the aforementioned GPUs) APEXX 5 was built to be a workstation above all others.
The eight mechanical hard drives can also be bifurcated to accommodate 16 2.5” SSDs. The problem with maximizing all of these capabilities is running out of expansion. First, there is no other motherboard that can handle the PCI-Express capabilities of the board used in the APEXX 5 . And it can max out GPUs while still offering additional slots for simultaneous use of a PCI-E SSD, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and a Sync card. That third available slot is a dummy slot, and is not available in any other chassis on the market.
I haven't spoken with any BOXX customers, so can't comment on whether the machines perform as advertised, nor whether there are any customer service or reliability issues. But if I had a spare $40,000 in my sock drawer, I might just be willing to become a customer myself.