CGNetworks Product Review
Boxx Technologies 3DBOXX 7108 Workstation
Joseph Tan, 25 May 2004

With so many companies releasing ‘high-end’ machines containing similar hardware components that even enthusiasts could put together, the question begs to be asked – which one is the right one? For a small company such as Boxx Technologies, based in Austin, Texas, this becomes an even more important issue to address, with established players Dell, HP, and IBM touting their wares and other relatively new players such as Alienware entering the market at breakneck pace.

Amidst all of this, Boxx Technologies manages to hold its own. Since its founding in 1996, Boxx has specifically serviced the niche post-production and 3D animation industries, while competitors seem to have entered this market as an afterthought to their focus on consumer machines. Boxx’s line of dual-CPU workstations are priced aggressively compared to the more established players. Certified for all major 3D applications such as Maya, XSI, 3DS Max, LightWave and more, they’re guaranteed to simply work – saving companies time and resources when setting up a production pipeline. To top it all off, the Boxx workstations simply look cool, decked out in their elegant and functional black-and-silver aluminium chassis design.

Boxx Technologies recently announced a new range of editing machines, workstations, and mobile computers at the broadcast trade-show NAB 2004, held annually in Las Vegas. In this article, we take a look at the new dual-Opteron 3DBOXX 7108 workstation, aimed specifically for digital content creation and featuring an all-new chassis design.

New Chassis
The 3DBOXX 7108 workstation features a new chassis design with a number of improvements over our older 3DBOXX R1i (from 2002). Both feature an aluminum chassis with matt black finish and a bright blue LED located on the front panel, seemingly a common trademark with BOXX's workstations. Improvements to the 3DBOXX 7108's chassis design – as compared to the 3DBOXX R1i – include tool-less removable side panels and a tool-less hard drive mount assembly.

The supplied software includes Windows XP pre-installed with all of the relevant hardware drivers set up. On unpacking the machine we found the software fully configured within minutes after power on.

At the front of the chassis are easily accessible USB 1.1 and IEEE-1394 ports, headphone and microphone audio sockets, and a front air intake with filter. The audio sockets really deserve to be labeled though, as they both looked identical. The front metal grill can be unscrewed by hand to reveal the air filter. At the rear of the machine our unit came with an additional USB 2.0 card and the motherboard shield featured an additional IEEE-1394 port. The chassis of the 3DBOXX 7108 is quite large, measuring 17cm wide, 43cm high, and 55cm deep, which can accommodate large motherboards with four 5.25-inch drives and eight internal hard drives. The total system weight of our box was 16kg, making for a relatively heavy machine.

The reviewed workstation features some serious hardware which may explain the presence of four large 120mm case fans. The 3DBOXX 7108 is equipped with a Sparkle brand 550 watt power supply.

One big difference between BOXX Technologies and the big players Dell and HP is that they don't offer machines equipped with the 64-bit AMD Opteron CPU's. Circulated benchmarks shows that the Opteron 248 (2.2GHz) proves to be a very fast CPU for 32-bit programs and even faster in 64-bit programs.

Currently 3DBOXX workstations are shipping with the standard 32-bit version of Windows XP (SP1a). Microsoft has announced it will ship Windows XP 64-bit edition in late 2004, so we can expect BOXX Technologies to offer this operating system then. For those who prefer Linux, BOXX Technologies are willing to accommodate customers who want 64-bit Linux preinstalled on their machine.

Images: The reviewed workstation features some serious hardware which may explain the presence of four large 120mm case fans. The 3DBOXX 7108 is equipped with a Sparkle brand 550 watt power supply.