BOXX Had No Shortage Of High-end Systems To Show Off At GTC 2016

NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference is all about showing off cutting-edge technologies and looking to the future (near or far). That being the case, if you appreciate the working side of graphics technology, GTC is some sort of geek heaven, with NVIDIA showing off what it has coming, and its partners doing the same. One of those partners this year was BOXX Technologies, a company that like NVIDIA aims to give customers the best possible solutions revolving around workstation graphics.

I was actually quite lucky to end up meeting with the folks at BOXX at GTC last week as various meetings kept me off of the show floor. I managed to catch them right before the show floor was about to close, and I’m sure glad I did, as the company had some great stuff on display. That includes its brand-new APEXX 5R and FLEXX.

If you’re familiar with BOXX’s current lineup, the APEXX 5R won’t be hard to wrap your head around: it’s an APEXX 5 in rackmount form. That’s what you can see on the top of the system in the shot below, right above the new FLEXX.

The APEXX 5R is designed to be nothing short of a graphics processing monster. As a closer shot highlights, the rackmount can be equipped with up to four top-end Quadro cards; in this case, the Quadro M6000. You’ll also be able to see that some of the system is water-cooled. The cards themselves are not, as the entire system is efficient enough to make heat a non-issue. As with all of its machines, BOXX has meticulously designed its APEXX 5R chassis to be as efficient as possible; heat won’t get in the way of the ~24 TFLOPs the unit can currently be spec’d for.

BOXX’s FLEXX is a unique beast. It’s in effect individual PCs with a long form-factor that slide into a rack; five side-by-side. These could be plugged into directly, or used over IP. I was told that this kind of solution could prove useful for mobile servers (think TV crews), but the power inside can also make them useful for remote workstations, allowing people to tap into one of these nodes to get their work done. Final specs will be announced once the product is ready to ship (I didn’t think to ask about the GPU options.)

In case either the APEXX R5 or FLEXX failed to impress people (I’m not sure how that’d be possible), the company also had an APEXX 4 on display that was kitted out with water-cooling. That even includes the 4x GeForce TITAN X cards. BOXX is more about working than gaming, so while this configuration would eat any modern game for breakfast, the company calls this an ultimate workstation for those using Chaos’ V-Ray RT.

While announced months ago, BOXX wanted to show off one of its latest creations: the APEXX 1. We actually have one of these en route to take a look at, but GTC was my first chance of seeing one in person. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I knew the PC was small, but it proved to be even smaller than I had expected (hopefully the smartphone provides some proper perspective).

Before wrapping up my meeting with BOXX, I couldn’t help but notice the project that the company decided to help show off NVIDIA’s Iray with. Looks a bit familiar, right?

Overall, a fantastic showing from BOXX at GTC. I look forward to bumping into the folks there again at the next event – wherever it might be – as the company always has impressive new gear to show off.