Maingear’s Retro98 Is A Modern Gaming Beast PC With 1990s LAN Party Vibes
Maingear is back with another retro-inspired drop and like the Retro95 that launched last summer, the new Retro98 meshes old school styling that will have you reminiscing about those all-night LAN parties from way back in the day, with decidedly modern hardware to conquer modern games. It's also another limited edition run, so once the available units sell out, it will be on to the next one.
Whereas the Retro95 took inspiration from classic designs like the Amiga 2000 and other boxy PCs like the Commodore PC20, the Retro98 draws its vintage flair from any number of IBM compatible machines from the 1990s, hearkening to an era of computing where beige towers ruled the day. To accomplish that feat, Maingear opted for Silverstone's FLP02 chassis.
"From the LED fan speed display, turbo button, and power lockout key on the
front panel, to the ketchup-and-mustard sleeved cable colorways to anti-kink coils on the tubing
and a pump/res combo proudly housed in the 5.25-inch drive bay space, every detail plays like a
love letter to the golden age of PC gaming. Even the front I/O is neatly hidden behind the Maingear logo, No mods needed, just turn it on and relive the thrill of 3AM LAN sessions," Maingear says.
All that's missing is a stain of blood from a sliced finger, though thankfully, the razor sharp metal corners that made such sacrificial offerings to the PC gods back in day are not part of the design. Some things are better left in the past.
While old school on the outside, the inside is totally modern. Maingear's offering four configurations, the most expensive of which is the Retro98α with an open-loop liquid-cooling setup. Described as "unapologetically overkill," this $9,799 configuration pairs an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, both nestled into an ASRock PG X870E Nova WiFi motherboard.
It also features 64GB of Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 memory, a 4TB Kingston Fury Renegade Gen5 SSD, an XPG Fusion 1,600W Titanium power supply, and custom Alphacool open GPU/CPU loop with six Alphacool Chrome Apex Stealth fans and dual radiators (360mm + 240mm). Windows 11 Pro comes preinstalled.
The next tier down is the Retro98 | 5090 priced at $4,999. This one trades the open-loop liquid-cooling for a Maingear Epic 360mm all-in-one unit. Other specs include a Ryzen 7 9850X3D, GeForce RTX 5090, 32GB of Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 RAM, 2TB Gen4 SSD, MSI X870E Gaming Plus WiFi motherboard, MSI 1,250 80 Plus Gold power supply, and Windows 11 Home.
After that, there's the Retro98 | 5080 priced at $3,499. It features many of the same components, save for the CPU (Ryzen 7 9800X3D), GPU (GeForce RTX 5080), and PSU (MSI 850W 80 Plus Gold).
The most affordable of the bunch is the Retro98 | 5070 priced at $2,499. This is the sold Intel configuration with a Core Ultra 7 265K Arrow Lake processor and MSI Z890 Gaming Plus WiFi motherboard. It also sports a GeForce RTX 5070 and MSI 650W 80 Plus Gold PSU. Otherwise, it features the same RAM, storage, cooling, and OS.
Remember what we said about a limited drop? Maingear isn't kidding—it's only making 32 units plus an additional five alpha units. "No reruns. Period."
Maingear's Retro98 is available now for purchase on the company's website.
