Maingear has recently launched a limited-edition personal computer, the Retro98, which skillfully merges the design sensibilities of the 1990s with cutting-edge internal technology. This release is crafted to resonate deeply with both seasoned gamers and creative individuals who recall the dawn of personal computing. The Retro98 tower, with its classic appearance, belies its modern capabilities, offering a unique blend of past aesthetics and future performance.
Targeting enthusiasts who grew up with early PC hardware, Maingear describes the Retro98 as a homage to those who eagerly upgraded graphics cards, yearned for more RAM, and reveled in LAN parties. While primarily geared towards gaming, the robust specifications of the Retro98 ensure it can effortlessly handle demanding creative workflows, such as high-resolution video editing and advanced photo manipulation tasks in applications like Photoshop and Lightroom.
Beneath its retro exterior, the Retro98 boasts impressive components, including liquid-cooled AMD Ryzen 9 9850X3D (with options up to 9950X3D) CPUs and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs. The system is further enhanced with high-speed Kingston FURY RAM and SSDs, ensuring top-tier performance for any intensive application. Each Retro98 unit is a testament to Maingear’s commitment to quality, hand-assembled by a single master technician at their New Jersey facility, emphasizing craftsmanship over mass production.
Wallace Santos, CEO and founder of Maingear, expressed that the Retro98 aims to recapture the excitement of optimizing PC performance for the most graphically demanding 32-bit games of the past, now realized with today's technology. This limited release offers several configurations: a base model with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB NVMe Gen4 SSD for $2,499. A mid-range option features an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 for $3,499, and a higher-tier version with an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and GeForce RTX 5090 is priced at $4,999.
For the ultimate performance, the Retro98 Alpha stands out with its open-loop liquid cooling system, an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, custom Alphacool liquid cooling, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 4TB NVMe Gen5 SSD. This powerhouse, which Maingear unapologetically labels as “overkill,” comes in at $9,799. Given the exclusivity of this release, with only 32 standard units and six Alpha units available, the Retro98 represents a rare opportunity for enthusiasts to own a piece of meticulously crafted, high-performance computing history.
This limited-edition offering by Maingear brilliantly combines the cherished aesthetic of computing's golden era with the raw power of modern hardware. It's a collector's item and a high-performance machine in one, designed to satisfy both nostalgic yearning and contemporary demand for speed and efficiency in gaming and creative tasks.