- Maingear Retro98 PC is the latest in its “nostalgic sleeper PC series”
- This limited-edition looks like a 90s beige PC, complete with trimmings like a Turbo button on the front
- It packs powerful hardware though, including up to an RTX 5090 GPU and Ryzen 9950X3D CPU – and this PC doesn’t come cheap, as you might guess
Maingear just revealed a new prebuilt desktop computer that’s perfect for nostalgia fans who long for a return to the 1990s, when tower PCs were unapologetically bland beige boxes.
The Retro98 is part of Maingear’s “nostalgic sleeper PC series” and it’s a limited-edition gaming PC. In fact, there will only be 32 of these computers made (plus six ‘alpha units’, not meaning prototypes, but these are the top-end PCs which are cooled by an Alphacool custom open loop).
As the name suggests, the Retro98 is built to resemble a tower PC from the late 90s, and it comes in a SilverStone FLP02 case.
You get an LED display on the front showing the fan speed, and – gasp – a Turbo button too, as well as ‘ketchup-and-mustard’ sleeved cable colorways, and, well, an entirely authentic 90s appearance.
However, as Maingear notes, don’t let the boxy beige exterior fool you into thinking this is a pedestrian PC, because it definitely isn’t. The base spec starts with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics card – priced at $2,499 in the US – going up to those Alphacool units with an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D plus RTX 5090, at $9,799.
Analysis: PCs that were all the beige
These are some seriously powerful PCs, with a very distinctive retro look as you can see. While the Retro98 won’t be for everyone, by any means, those of us who do remember the 90s – and playing Quake clan matches over a dial-up modem (back when QuakeWorld was revolutionary for the pings of 56K modem players) – are going to be transported back in time in a good way.
The Retro98 sparked up an enjoyable conversation this afternoon in TechRadar’s chat about long-forgotten PC makers (in the UK), bringing up some names I hadn’t heard in a long time. (Like Viglen for instance, and Evesham, a firm I bought several PCs from back in the day).
Of course, these are seriously expensive rigs, but what price can you put on a slice of history? Albeit resurrected, reinvigorated history. That said, ten grand is kind of pushing it, and then some, for that top dog model, of which there are only six.
Still, Maingear reminds us that you’ll get lifetime support with these limited-edition machines, which “aren’t slapped-together beige boxes, they’re built with purpose, reinforced for longevity, and tuned to get every last drop of performance.”
Just don’t forget to press the Turbo button.
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