ACEMAGIC continues its nostalgia play with the Retro X3, a compact mini PC housed in a boxy grey chassis with a red power button that evokes classic game consoles without directly copying any particular system. First announced in January, the Retro X3 is now available in China as a barebones system starting at around $275 (€253), positioning it as the more affordable sibling to the NES-lookalike Retro X5 with its Strix Point processors.
At the heart of the Retro X3 sits AMD's Ryzen 7 H 255, an 8-core, 16-thread chip built on Zen 4 architecture with Radeon 780M integrated graphics packing 12 RDNA 3 compute units. The processor shares DNA with AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme found in handheld gaming PCs, though it runs at a higher 3.8 GHz base clock and 45W TDP compared to the Z1 Extreme's 3.3 GHz and 15W. Notably absent is any NPU for hardware-accelerated AI, setting it apart from AMD's newer Hawk Point variants.
The mini PC offers solid expandability with two SODIMM slots supporting DDR5-5600 memory and dual M.2 2280 slots for PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage. Connectivity includes USB4 Type-C at 40 Gbps, six USB 3.2 Type-A ports, DisplayPort 2.0, HDMI 2.1, and 2.5 gigabit Ethernet, plus WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. While the integrated graphics can handle retro gaming and lighter modern titles, anyone expecting AAA performance at 4K should look elsewhere. There's currently no word on international availability or pricing outside China.
