by
Viva Las Vegas! It Was Good to Be Back
After a long hiatus, BOXX returned to the NAB Show with great results.
BOXX is renowned for manufacturing purpose-built, high performance computer workstations. Engineers and product designers want our machines for SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, and other CAD applications. Our systems are also highly prized by architects determined to optimize Revit, AutoCAD, and other architecture applications. But if you know anything about our 27 year history, you know it began in media & entertainment. Film editors, animators, and visual effects artists, from indies to major studios, know Avid, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Creaitve Cloud, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, Maya, and more run best on a BOXX. As for rendering, same story, regardless of the render engine.
So…after the long COVID lockdown hiatus, we returned to Las Vegas and the NAB Show with a (joyful) vengeance. The BOXX team showcased our latest and greatest systems, led by one of our new W-Class workstations which feature Intel® Xeon® W processors, code-named “Sapphire Rapids.” In the media & entertainment market, AMD has stolen a good bit of thunder from Intel with the AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO, but the arrival of the new Xeon W puts Intel back in the game. That’s great news as both are outstanding processors and healthy competition benefits us all.
Our APEXX W3 is equipped with the new, 24-core Intel Xeon W-2400 processor, up to 1TB of memory, and two NVIDIA® RTX™ Ada Generation GPUs. This workstation is purpose-built to accelerate rendering and simulation, making it ideal for Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, and other motion media applications, as well as rendering engines like Blender, V-Ray, and Autodesk Arnold. The W-Class line also includes the new and incredibly powerful APEXX W4 featuring a 56-core Intel® Xeon® W-3400 processor and up to four GPUs.
Speaking of awesome compute power, we also brought along our Avid-qualified APEXX T4 workstation which a delighted customer purchased directly from the floor! T4 is powered by the aforementioned AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO processor which optimizes every phase of video content with up to 64 processing cores and a boost clock of 4.2GHz. This beast supports up to four professional grade AMD® Radeon Pro™ or NVIDIA RTX GPUs, as well as 2TB of memory. APEXX T4 enables users to simultaneously multitask without sacrificing efficiency or performance using 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Adobe Creative Cloud, DaVinci Resolve, VEGAS Post, Unreal Engine, and rendering engines like Arnold, Blender, V-Ray, Redshift, Octane Render, and more.
Completing the BOXX NAB lineup was a stellar pair of rack mounted workstation platforms. FLEXX S1G, a workstation in the form of a rack-mounted module, features 13th Gen Intel Core i7 or i9 processors. As part of the FLEXX data center platform which houses multiple modules, S1G is purpose-built to accelerate 3D content and motion media workflows for on premise or remote data center installations. FLEXX is the backbone of BOXX Cloud, and we were flooded with inquiries about both.
Also on hand was RAXX W3, our most advanced system, powered by a 56-core Intel Xeon W-3400 and up to four NVIDIA RTX GPUs. RAXX W3 is specifically designed to accelerate simulation and real-time rendering in film editing and broadcast production workflows.
A special (and extremely popular) feature in our 2023 NAB Show booth was our flagship APEXX S3, the world’s fastest workstation, demonstrating writer/director Victoria Bousis’ “Stay Alive, My Son,” a moving cinematic VR experience garnering major awards (including the Producer’s Guild Innovation Award) and premiering at the Cannes, Venice and South by Southwest (SXSW) film festivals. As for APEXX S3, it features a 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 or i9 processor overclocked to 6.0GHz, up to two NVIDIA RTX Ada Generation GPUs, and accelerates 3D design and VFX applications while also delivering optimal support for multi-GPU tasks.
There are some things in life that simply must be experienced. Of course, when one offers that comment, it usually pertains to a specific event, milestone, or historical location. However, when it comes to BOXX, the adage also rings true. As we often say around here, experience BOXX for yourself and see how your applications are supposed to run. I can tell you all day about the benefits of a Made in the USA workstation purpose-built for your creative applications, but that is no substitute for showing you, and that’s what NAB was all about. Viva Las Vegas!