The annual NAB Show in fabulous Las Vegas is “where content comes to life,” and inside the booth we shared with our data storage affiliate company, PAC Storage, BOXX followed suit. BOXX boasts an impressive (and extensive) product portfolio that accelerates every creative workflow within the media & entertainment space, but this year we went lean and mean on showcasing our workstations (and left space for PAC to show their wares). So what did our multitude of visitors see at the NAB Show?
APEXX T4 PRO: The World’s Fastest AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ Workstation
For actual workstation demonstrations, there was APEXX T4 PRO, the world’s fastest AMD Ryzen Threadripper™ workstation. Purpose-built to easily tackle incredibly demanding motion media, AI, rendering, and complex simulation, APEXX T4 PRO is equipped with the most powerful AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper PRO 7000 WX-Series processor, 2TB of memory, and up to four NVIDIA RTX 6000 Blackwell GPUs to supercharge every facet of your post production and broadcast workflow. What we like to refer to as “The Virtual Studio Solution,” APEXX T4 PRO delivers unrivaled performance, as it is unavailable from the big name, tier one, commodity PC manufacturers (who were also at NAB and undoubtedly envious).
BOXX APEXX T4 PRO Highlights
- AMD™ Ryzen Threadripper™ PRO 7000 WX-Series processors (up to 96 cores) maximizes post production workflows
- State-of-the-art liquid cooling optimizes system and application performance 128 PCIe® Gen5 lanes support multi-GPUs for rendering/simulation/visualization, as well as capture cards, high speed networking and storage adapters, SSDs, or Sync II cards.
- BOXX custom chassis enables desk side or rack mounted capabilities
More BOXX AMD Threadripper Options
Even though we kept them at home, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention two other Threadripper–based BOXX workstations: APEXX T4 and APEXX T3.
APEXX T4 looks the same on the outside as the PRO edition, but this workstation is known as “The Optimal Compositing Solution.” Also rack mountable, blazing fast, and liquid-cooled, this tower of power (5.3GHz) is equipped with a 64-core, AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 7000 Series processor, and up to four GPUs. From video editing to compositing, T4 is outstanding for post production. It even takes advantage of AI features like NukeX’s Copy Cat and Unreal Engine Integration. So, there’s an APEXX T4 and an APEXX T4 PRO? Yes, and if you’re confused, this comparison blog will make it easy to understand.
If the T4’s sound like they’re more than your workflow demands, your ideal solution may be the APEXX T3, a 64-core small tower Threadripper 7000 series workstation (5.3GHz) available with up to two GPUs.
If your organization encompasses all areas of production from high data set 3D modeling and particle system simulation to compute intensive rendering, you can’t top “The Total Production Workhorse,” RAXX T3PRO. This rackmount is at home in a data center and also powered by Threadripper PRO and up to four GPUs.
The Future is FLEXX
Speaking of the data center, the BOXX NAB Show booth also featured FLEXX, a revolutionary data center platform (and hardware foundation of BOXX Cloud) purpose-built to accelerate 3D content creation and motion media workflows. FLEXX houses multiple BOXX workstations condensed into high density modules for on premise or remote creators.
At NAB, it also garnered plenty of interest and lots of questions from visitors. Much of the questioning centered on KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), an open source virtualization technology for Linux® operating systems. With KVM, Linux can function as a hypervisor that runs multiple, isolated virtual machines (VMs). I say “surprisingly” regarding the discussion because KVM debuted way back in 2007. It has since been superseded by HP Anyware, a highly secure and flexible remote desktop solution designed for hybrid workforces. BOXX is an official OEM HP Anywhere partner.
Used with FLEXX, HP Anywhere offers rapid deployment, easy management, and advantages like the ability to encrypt a video stream and send it over LAN or WAN while supporting up to four 4K monitors. A traditional KVM, on the other hand, sends a single monitor over LAN only. Also, KVM cost per port is fairly expensive, especially with one that is internet connected. In short, although KVMs may be good for IT, they are far from ideal for creators in media & entertainment—as well as other industries.
GPU Rendering
Regarding other discussions inside the BOXX booth, as always, GPU rendering remains a very hot topic. This year, much of it focused on the new, state-of-the-art NVIDIA RTX 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition GPUs. Also in the mix was the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs available inside BOXX systems and offering major performance increases over their predecessors.
Maximum Threadripper. Maximum BOXX.
If you’re an Media & Entertainment M&E content creator, there’s a BOXX purpose-built to remove bottlenecks and accelerate your specific applications and workflow, so visit our Maximum Threadripper/Maximum BOXX page to take a deeper dive on their specs and capabilities. You’ll find a wealth of information there, including the APEXX T4 on sale until April 30. If you have questions, our performance specialists have answers. Call 877.877.BOXX or inquire via online chat from our homepage.