Introduction

The ACEMAGIC Retro X5 was one of the Mini-PCs I was most looking forward to testing long before it ever made it onto the bench. Growing up in the 90s, the NES-inspired design hit me right away. It is smaller and much more modern than the console that inspired it, but ACEMAGIC did a very good job capturing the shape, color treatment, and overall vibe of that era. Anyone who grew up with that generation of gaming will probably understand the appeal within seconds of seeing it.

That would not count for much if the hardware were average, but the Retro X5 is one of the stronger premium mini PCs in this class. It uses AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, a 12-core, 24-thread processor paired with Radeon 890M graphics running at 2900 MHz, which puts it right alongside other high-end systems like the GEEKOM A9 Max. That is why this system is so interesting, because there is serious current-gen hardware under that nostalgic shell, and the Radeon 890M gives it a lot more gaming room than the older integrated graphics Mini-PCs.

Going for a little over $1K, the Retro X5 is priced like a premium Mini-PC, but the overall package does a lot to support that cost. ACEMAGIC includes 32 GB of dual-channel DDR5-5600 with support for up to 128 GB, two M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD slots, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, dual 2.5 GbE LAN, and Windows 11 Pro. Display support is also excellent, with HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.0, USB4 Type-C DP Alt Mode, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, giving it support for up to four displays, including 8K at 60 Hz through HDMI and DisplayPort. All of this makes the Retro X5 feel like much more than a novelty shell.

Next, let's take a closer look at the design before getting into the performance results.