BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation Review

BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation Test Specifications

Here is a list of how our BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation came equipped:

• Motherboard: Asus WS C422 SAGE/10G motherboard
• Processor: Intel Xeon W-2295 165W 18 cores / 36 Threads
• Memory: 64GB DDR4-2933
• Graphics Card: Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000
• OS Boot: Intel Optane 905P 960GB
• Operating System Windows 10 Pro

We probably would suggest that if you spec a system like this you use a different SSD as the primary OS drive. The Optane 905P is great for databases and higher-end random workloads, but it is also expensive on a price per GB basis. BOXX has a number of configuration options, so we think that is a place to save money.

Conversely, we also think that 64GB of memory is a bit light for this platform. We suggest starting around 128GB ECC memory to take advantage of the platform.

Testing The BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation

The CPU we will be using is dual Intel Xeon W-2295. Here is the CPU-Z shot:

The Intel Xeon W-2295 is a very capable CPU, the base speed is 3GHz but can Turbo up to 4.6GHz. We have looked at the Intel Xeon W-2295 running Linux benchmarks here.

Recently we ran a separate review of the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000, which can be found here.

Let us continue with performance testing.

BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is a well-known benchmark to test your HDD or SSD’s.

The installed Asus WS C422 SAGE/10G motherboard does not include PCIe Gen 4 which is all the rage on AMD platforms now. The Xeon W-2200 series and C422 platforms are still PCIe Gen3 platforms. As a result, our review unit came with an Intel Optane 905P SSD which is best in the slot for this platform.

BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation AIDA64 Memory Test

AIDA64 memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, and Memory Copy) measure the maximum achievable memory data transfer bandwidth.

We have 64GB of DDR4 DRAM, and we can see the memory performance here, it stacks up well for Intel-based systems.

BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation Cinebench R15

Here are our Cinebench R15 results:

We ran Cinebench R15 several times, this is the best score we received which reinforces Cinebench does better with CPUs that have a larger number of cores. Single-core performance on the Intel Xeon W-2295 is outstanding, multi-core shows good performance but falls behind Threadripper based platforms.

BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation Cinebench R20

We have not run Cinebench R20 in our reviews but will start doing so in future reviews.

We have only just started using Cinebench R20. It shows the Intel Xeon W-2295 shows performance at the bottom of the chart.

BOXX APEXX W3 Class Workstation Geekbench 4

Geekbench is a popular benchmark that we have a lot of data on so we decided to run this as well.

Geekbench is a benchmark that the Intel Xeon W-2295 generates good results in the middle of the chart. You are going to notice numbers below the Intel Core i9-10980XE which is largely due to motherboard vendors enabling higher power limits on desktop motherboards.

Next, we are going to look at system performance benchmarks.