Building an AI workstation is rarely about buying the single fastest component on the market; it is about finding the specific "sweet spot" that fits your workload. Whether you are prioritizing VRAM capacity, PCIe lane availability, or thermal management, the right build depends entirely on how you plan to use your machine. The goal isn't just raw power, but the ability to run the tools you need efficiently.
This is the first article in a new AI Hardware series talking about the requirements for running AI Models and why paying attention to these things can help you build a better AI Workstation. If anything learning why a DGX Spark or Mac Mini work but, can also be really slow.
2026 marks the 30th year for Lexar and they started CES off with an announcement that they were going to be the global storage partner for the Argentina National Football (Soccer) Team and launched a number of AI focused storage devices.
According to CES 2026 material there were over 4100 exhibitors registered to attend along with several unknowns looking to take advantage of CES by hosting their own events in area hotels. It is not practical to see everything but with a good pair of shoes and a crisp Pepsi I attempted to do the impossible.
Pro Gamers Group was available at CES showing of some of the latest products available in their catalog including a number of ultra light mice, a racing chair and some rather impressive GPU waterblocks.
The motherboard in the Classic Case build had extensive damage that was targeted right around the motherboard mounting hole below the battery. My guess is that when this system was taken out of service it was stored on its side which allowed the battery contents to pool up and attack that one region.
The system featured in this ongoing project is a build from Magitronic. This was a Taiwanese based hardware maker that was able to design and build just about everything that went into their systems. I could not find any specific details about this particular build but, it features a Magitonic 602 motherboard along with some other parts with a Magitronic sticker.
For this Real Retro Gaming adventure, I’m going to play a game from my youth called “Hack”, or PC Hack as its official name. This was a freeware offering that you could download from Bulletin Board Systems or buy out of the back of computer magazines. I'll also be playing this on a 386 40Mhz with dual 5.25" Floppy drives.
During the service life of these computers there were reports of batteries exploding and/or leaking, sometimes they would destroy the motherboard and other times they just stopped keeping time. Either way it was an acceptable risk and usually when the board or battery failed it was time to upgrade anyway.
I have been in the process of collecting some old Retro PC hardware for some YouTube projects and before I started tearing into each of the computers, I wanted to take an image of each hard drive and then document the components in each system.
The drive featured in this video is a Microscience HH-1060 Half Height RLL Compatible hard drive supporting 66MB of storage capacity. It has issues moving the heads and I'm going to show you how I fixed it.
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