BOXX APEXX T3 Power Consumption
The BOXX APEXX T3 utilizes a high-quality power supply. The Seasonic Prime 1300 Gold is a nod to the system’s ability to house the top of the line 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX along with high-end GPUs and storage. We measured the system using one of our labs’ Extech TrueRMS Power Analyzer 380803 meters and took power measurements at several different points.
- Idle: 168W
- STH 70% Load: 523W
- 100% Load: 781W
- Maximum Recorded: 842W
These are good numbers. Using an 80Plus Platinum rated power supply may take a few watts off of these numbers, but the power cost is going to be negligible compared to the hardware and software licensing costs for this system. The Seasonic unit is a great choice here.
BOXX APEXX T3 Noise
The BOXX APEXX T3 is not the type of system that is intended to be powered on infrequently and out of earshot. Instead, it is designed to be in the workspace of creative professionals. You do not want a highly paid engineer or designer to lose focus because their workstation sounds like a jet engine readying for takeoff. We used or NIST calibrated Extech sound meter to take idle and load figures.
- Idle: 34.2 dBA
- STH 70% Load: 46.1 dBA
- 100% Load: 52.2 dBA
Here is where the BOXX design is both good and shows the edges. Under most loads, the system is extremely well behaved. The hum of the fans is not imposing and the pump for the closed loop water cooling setup is insulated from the exterior to a large degree. When one pumps up the CPU and GPU, the system can get quite noisy. If you are doing sustained stints of local rendering or number crunching, you probably want to take a coffee or lunch break.
Final Words
Overall, this system performed admirably as well it should. These configurations are far from inexpensive. After using the system, the only two comments we have are that the system could be improved upon in terms of using an 80Plus Platinum power supply instead of Gold which would increase efficiency slightly. Noise is relatively low at idle, but under full load, the fans need to cool the extremely hot CPU and that creates a lot of fan noise. Using a lower power CPU, for example, a 16-core CPU means that we could never get the system into this high-fan speed mode.
What BOXX does with the APEXX T3 is nothing short of impressive. By designing their own chassis, and making the hard tradeoffs to have the system only cater to high-end buyers, BOXX is able to create an enormously powerful and compact platform. The system itself checks the box with all the features you may want while looking stylish on the workspace. Any creative professional would count themselves fortunate to have a BOXX APEXX T3 as their workstation.
It’s so sad that there are no serious workstation motherboards for Threadrippper, let alone Ryzen, so OEMs are stuck using these “gamer” boards.
Why do people buy this? It’s literally parts anyone can put together. There is absolutely nothing special about what BOXX is doing here.
It’s great to see STH reviewing BOXX systems. It’s about time.
STHFan2 we use BOXX. We can make them for less, but I don’t want to do it and we don’t have anyone else who wants to. Our time is more valuable than saving a few bucks and having nowhere to turn for support.
Nice system. We’ll look at these but I think we’d want a 2950X instead