3DBOXX R1 Athlon MP 1800+ 1.53 GHz Workstation Review

Page 2 of 4

Two very large fans cool down this box in addition to the two fans on the processors and the one on the power supply. Almost two thirds of the front of the workstation consists of a large vent space to ensure massive air circulation. I don't think that overheating should be a concern at all with this unit as you can feel a strong air current when you place your hand close to it.

A slight drawback of this open design is that there isn't much to insulate the user from the all noise generated by all those fans. But I'd much rather live with a little bit of noise than an overheating workstation. [an error occurred while processing this directive] The "Cool" Factor

Too bad the digital camera could not capture the intense blue of the hard drive LED.
Many animation facilities spend a lot of money in interior design. The last thing they want is plain, boring beige boxes to spoil the looks. SGI have always designed cool workstations and so have other manufacturers such as Intergraph and Apple. BOXX understands the market and also offers designs ranging from cool to radical. In the case of our R1 review unit, it simply looks cool. A black industrial looking box, it looks like a serious machine and blends well into any décor. It's a large medium-sized tower yet it looks a lot smaller, possibly due to the black color and sleek aluminum construction. Even the power and hard drive activity LEDs look cool. The power one is white and the other emits a very intense blue light.

This is a very light workstation, a definite plus when it needs to be hauled to a different location or if it needs to be taken home for those long, weekend crunches. Access to the interior is very easy, as it should be with any workstation. The design actually fooled me because six Phillips head screws secure each side of the case. I initially thought that this would make opening the workstation a real pain. However, they are not regular screws. Instead they are the quick disconnect kind, requiring just a quarter turn each to open the case. Since BOXX custom configures their workstations to the customers' exact needs, chances are that these boxes won't be opened very frequently, anyway.

To add the finishing touch to the coolness of this workstation, BOXX ships it with Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer. I like its ergonomic design, looks, precision and cool red light. Sadly, the review workstation came with the very ugly Microsoft Internet keyboard, which has nothing to do with the rest of the package. It's beige and I don't see why an animator would need all those Internet navigation buttons. I'd much ratter get a matching black keyboard.

The Performance

Adjustable feet don't let the 3DBOXX wobble.
Just when I thought that my 1.4 GHz Atlhon was the fastest thing on silicon, here comes the R1 to teach me a lesson. How humiliating! This workstation is a monster! The seventh-generation dual AMD Athlon processors with QuantiSpeed architecture and Smart MP Technology are amazingly fast and the workstation is extremely stable.

Smart MP technology enhances overall performance by increasing data movement between the two CPUs, chipset and memory system. It features dual point-to-point, high-speed 266MHz system buses with Error Correcting Code (ECC) support, providing up to 2.1GB per second per CPU of bus bandwidth. Smart MP technology also has an optimized Modified Owner Exclusive Shared Invalid (MOESI) cache coherency protocol that manages data and memory traffic in a multiprocessing environment.

Prev 1 2 3 4 Next
Related sites: • Animation Artist • AV Video • Digital Animators • Digital CAD • Digital Game Developer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • DVD Creation • The WWUG
Related forums: •
[an error occurred while processing this directive]