$2,499 is the starting price for Velocity Micro’s 2026 Raptor Z55i, which PCMag named its new Editors’ Choice for high-end gaming desktops after testing a $5,999 RTX 5090 configuration.
$5,999 buys a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, GeForce RTX 5090, 64GB DDR5 RAM and 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD—hardware that delivered class-leading multicore and strong 4K gaming results.
PCIe 5.0 storage is the main knock: the Z55i’s motherboard supports it, but Velocity Micro offers no PCIe 5.0 SSD option, leaving the system behind some rivals in storage benchmarks.
More than $1,500 cheaper than similarly configured premium competitors, the compact 'sleeper' tower stayed effectively level with top-end gaming systems, losing little outside some 1080p CPU-bound tests.