In our most recent workstation review, we confidently claimed that professional-class workstations are not overclocked. Business users generally don't care about an extra five or 10% performance that could compromise the stability of their machines or result in an error impacting the viability of an important design.
It seems we weren't entirely accurate with that statement, though.
Boxx Technologies is a system builder that specializes in designing and integrating workstations and rendering systems for the visual effects, digital content creation, and advanced visualization markets. It was founded in 1996 and is based in Austin, Texas. The company says its business model involves the innovative integration of best-in-class components in order to create solutions that enable market segment users to get their work done as fast as is possible. Boxx doesn't build consumer-level systems for gaming and productivity applications. Its focus is on the workstation market.
Some notable Boxx clients include: CafeFX, Technicolor, Disney, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, URS, BMW Designworks, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the U.S. Air Force. It has partnerships with most developers in the DCC and CAD industries.
The 3DBOXX 4860 Xtreme-Series Workstation
Boxx premiered its new Xtreme workstation family just before SIGGRAPH 2010, and the systems were used extensively in demonstration booths at SIGGRAPH. For instance, the Nvidia demo displays at the show were running on Boxx workstations. The 4860 is a single-socket Intel Core i7-based workstation available in various configurations, up to and including the overclocked setup we are testing here.
The company also sells its 3DBOXX 7600-series workstations based on AMD Opteron CPUs and 8500-series systems that employ dual-socket-capable Xeon 5600-series processors. The AMD-based machine can't be purchased overclocked, but the 8500-series configurations can be purchased at up to 4.2 GHz. While the 4860 employs an X58-based motherboard and LGA 1366-based Core i7 processor, the 8500-series relies on an Intel 5520 chipset-based platform and Xeon processors, which are needed to run in a 2P arrangement.
The 4860 can take two dual-slot GPUs, while the slightly higher-end 4880 can take four dual-slot or seven single-slot GPUs. The 8550 can do the same four/seven configuration. It should be noted that these slots would not be merely used just for graphics cards, as Tesla GPU Computing boards require 16-lane PCIe slots as well.
Boxx designs its own chassis, which it has manufactured locally. Installed drives, as you can see in the images above, are mounted vertically behind the motherboard, which certainly increases the available airflow to the board and its components. At the same time, though, it may limit airflow across the hard drives. Though that's probably not an issue with our test setup, we suspect it could be if you were using a large array of 10 000 or 15 000 RPM disks. Fortunately, Boxx says that it tests its systems with a full load of drives, and hasn't seen any troublesome temperatures with its chassis design. Moreover, we didn't encounter any heat-related issues during testing.
- Introduction: Overclocking A Workstation?
- Hardware Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3D Animation
- Benchmark Results: Autodesk 3ds Max 2011, Cinebench, VUE, And MatchMover
- Benchmark Results: SPEC Tests
- Benchmark Results: Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, And Photoshop
- Benchmark Results: DAW
- Benchmark Results: Euler3D And Sandra 2011
- Conclusion



You forget, the cost of a commercial PC includes service, support, and licensed certifications.
Licensed certifications may be confidence inspiring to some, however, I think they are a waste of money. It is just a different form of branding that can be marketed at what is usually an expensive premium. Think THX certification. It was expensive in consumer audio and video, however, in my opinion, it has had it's 15-minutes of fame.
I agree with this, and it also points out something else. For all of us who build custom systems for ourselves and our friends / family, this type of product provides a data point for the value of that work. your time is worth money - don't ever forget that. So if you built a custom workstation w/ comparable parts and OCed to 4.2 GHz and supported it for 3 years, then you are providing roughly $4k of value to the recipient.
At the time that I built these, the i5-750 system offered a $300 savings over an i7-920 system. Today it might be a different story, and with the i7-SB we might run them at 4.0GHz.
Thanks for pointing that out. The case looks like crap.
For $8000.00 case looks cheap and dull.
I'd buy one again, quality, fit and finish, component selection... all as good as you can get.
in reality a 100% boost in performance does not equate to a 100% boost in productivity, you are still limited by the user and his work flow, a faster machine does not mean you can reduce head count, dude A is still going have to finish his job (all be it slightly faster) and dude B still has to finish his job, dude A is not going be doing his and dude B's job just cause he got a faster machine
where this kind of power becomes useful is if you got big numbers to crunch (3d rendering, FEA) and even then you'll be better served by a high density setup like a blade server. The only real use for such a machine would be for bespoke jobs whereby a person might need to spot check some work his been doing, but that's not a daily occurrence and you dont give everyone a machine like this just in the off chance they need to spot check their work once a while, in reality this would be a single shared machine that would not be creating production data, in which case an overclocked machine makes sense
On a sidenote I like their case/chasis. Good performance in the end.
Mine has been running 24/7 nearly since I got it (however old Opteron 250's are), maybe 6 or 7 years. It still boots faster than non-SSD systems today (15k SCSI RAID, stupid fast in its day and still very respectable).