Boxx Technologies Introduces 36-Core, Five-GPU Apexx 5 Workstation

Boxx Technologies has introduced the Apexx 5 pro workstation, supporting the use of up to five different GPUs — a dedicated viewport GPU (for example, the Nvidia Quadro K2200) plus as many as four more powerful GPUs (Nvidia Quadro K6000, AMD FirePro W9100, etc.) — with PCIe slots left over for SSD storage, 10 Gig Ethernet, or other optional hardware.

All told, the system has seven expansion card slots to maximize its performance in VFX and animation as well as engineering and architectural workflows, Boxx said. The liquid-cooled system supports dual Intel Xeon 2600v3 processors, for a max of 36 CPU cores, and eight full-sized hard drives can be connected up inside the box.

Apexx 5 Tech Specs

Intel Xeon E5-2600v3 Processors Liquid Cooled
Intel® C612 Chipset 
RDIMM ECC DDR4-2133Mhz(16) DIMM Slots
(10) 6GB Serial ATA 3.0 ports(RAID 0, 1, and 10)
(2) Gigabit Ethernet ports
Audio Front Panel Mic + Audio Out
(5) USB 3.0 Ports: (3) Front, (2) Rear
(4) USB 2.0 Ports: (2) Front, (2) Rear    
1250W Power Supply
4U: 6.825"w x 17.815"h x 24.65"d

Expansion options:
(8) 3.5" hard drive bays
(1) 5.25" drive bays
(4) PCI Express x16
(1) PCI Express x16 (x8 Mode)
(1) PCI Express x8 
(1) PCI Express x8 (x4 Mode) – Sound Card

Source: Boxx Technologies

Boxx calls the Apexx 5 "ideal" for GPU rendering in applications including V-Ray RT, Nvidia Iray, Octane Render, and CATIA Live Rendering. "If a creative professional or organization requires this level of power and performance for perfecting their ideas, they can't get it from Dell, HP, and Lenovo," said Senior Product Marketing Manager Chris Morley in a prepared statement.

If the performance is exceptional, so is the price — a basic Windows 7 Pro configuration with dual Intel Xeon 3.5 GHz processors, 32 GB of RAM, Nvidia K5200 graphics and a 240 GB SSD starts at $10,418. Just for fun, we spec'd out a system with the works (maxing out CPU power and SSD storage, upping RAM to 256 GB, packing in four Nvidia K6000 GPUs with sync, etc.) and topped out at just over $47,000.