Review: Boxx Apexx A3

Posted on February 9, 2025 at February 9, 2025 by Greg Corke

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This compact desktop with liquid cooled ‘Zen 5’ AMD Ryzen 9000 Series processor and Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Generation GPU is a powerhouse for design viz, writes Greg Corke

In the world of workstations, Boxx is somewhat unique. Through its extensive reseller channel, it has the global reach of a major workstation OEM, but the technical agility of a specialist manufacturer.

Liquid cooling is standard across many of its workstations, and you can always expect to see the latest processors soon after launch. And there’s a tonne to choose from. In addition to workstation staples like Intel Core, Intel Xeon, AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro, and (to a lesser extent) AMD Ryzen, Boxx goes one step further with AMD Epyc, a dual socket processor typically reserved for servers. The company also stands out for its diverse range of workstation form factors, including desktops, rack-mounted systems, and high-density datacentre solutions.

This article is part of AEC Magazine’s 2025 Workstation Special report

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Boxx played a key role in AMD’s revival in the workstation market, debuting the AMD Ryzen-powered Apexx A3 in 2019.

The latest version of this desktop workstation may look identical on the outside, but inside, the new ‘Zen 5’ AMD Ryzen 9000 Series chip is a different beast entirely. 2019’s ‘Zen 2’ AMD Ryzen 3000 Series stood out for its multithreaded performance but fell short of Intel in single-threaded tasks critical for CAD and BIM. Now, as we explore in our ‘Intel vs. AMD’ article here, AMD has the edge in a much broader range of workflows.

The Boxx Apexx A3 is crafted from aircraft grade aluminium, delivering a level of strength that surpasses off-the-shelf cases used by many custom manufacturers . Considering it can host up to two high-end GPUs, it’s surprisingly compact, coming in at 174 x 388 x 452mm, significantly smaller than the other AMD Ryzen 9000-based workstation in this report — the Scan 3XS GWP-A1-R32 – which we review on here.

The chassis offers several practical features. The front mesh panel easily clips off, providing access to a customer replaceable filter. The front I/O panel is angled upward for convenient access to the two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-A) ports and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-C) port. Around the back, you’ll find an array of additional ports, including two USB 4.0 (Type-C), three USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-A), and five USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-A).

For connectivity, there’s fast 802.11ab Wi-Fi 7 with rear mounted antennas, although most users — particularly those working with data from a central server — are likely to utilise the 5 Gigabit Ethernet LAN for maximum speed and reliability.

The chassis layout is different to most other workstations of this type, with the motherboard flipped through 180 degrees, leaving the rear I/O ports at the bottom and the GPUs at the top — upside down.

To save space, the power supply sits almost directly in front of the CPU. This wouldn’t be possible in an air-cooled system, because the heat sink would get in the way. But with the Boxx Apexx A3, the CPU is liquid cooled, and the compact All-in-one (AIO) Asetek closed loop cooler draws heat away to a 240mm radiator, located at the front of the machine.

Our test machine came with the 16- core AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, the flagship model in the standard Ryzen 9000 Series. Partnered with the massively powerful Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Generation GPU, this workstation screams design visualisation. And it has some serious clout.

In Twinmotion it delivered five 4K path traced renders in a mere 342 seconds and in Lumion four FHD ray trace renders in 70 seconds. That’s more than three times quicker than an Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada. And with 32 GB of onboard memory to play with, the GPU can handle very complex scenes.

Our test machine’s focus on GPU computation means the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X’s 16 cores may spend a good amount of time under utilised. Opting for a CPU with fewer cores could save you some cash, though it would come with a slight reduction in single-core frequency.

As it stands, the system delivers impressive CPU benchmark scores across CAD, BIM, ray-trace rendering, and reality modelling. However, in some tests, it was narrowly outperformed by the 3XS GWPA1-R32 and when pushing all 16 cores to their limits in V-Ray, fan noise was a little bit more noticeable (although certainly not loud).

Boxx configured our test machine with 96 GB of Crucial DDR5 memory, carefully chosen to deliver the maximum capacity with the fastest performance. With two 48 GB modules, it can run at 5,600 MT/s. Anything above that, up to a maximum of 192 GB, would see speeds drop significantly.

Rounding out the specs is a 2TB Crucial T705 SSD, the fastest PCIe 5.0 drive we’ve tested. It delivered exceptional sequential read/write speeds in CrystalDiskMark, clocking in at an impressive 14,506 MB/s read and 12,573 MB/s write — outpacing the Corsair MP700 Pro in the Scan 3XS workstation. However, it’s rated for 1,200 total terabytes written (TBW), giving it slightly lower endurance.

The Asrock X870E Taichi motherboard includes room for a second SSD, while the chassis features two hard disk drive (HDD) cradles at the top. However, with modern SSDs offering outstanding price, performance, these cradles are likely to remain empty for most users.

The verdict

The Boxx Apexx A3 is a top-tier compact workstation, fully customisable and built to order, allowing users to select the perfect combination of processors to meet their needs. Among specialist system builders, Boxx is probably the closest competitor to the major workstation OEMs like Dell, HP, and Lenovo. However, none of these major players have yet released an AMD Ryzen 9000-based workstation — and given past trends, there’s no guarantee they will. This gives Boxx a particular appeal, especially for companies seeking a globally available product powered by the latest ‘Zen 5’ AMD Ryzen processors.