This is not my rig personally but here is the most powerful I have found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFEpHEXBCbA
here is one that is not too new but powerful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzm5yBYIR6Q

agent_x007 wrote:

Pentium Dual Core E5700 @ 4GHz with 4GB RAM (locked to 1,13GB for Win 98 SE), ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2, GF 7900 GX2 and SATA3 SSD 😀
Next time I try this with QX9770 @ 3,8GHz 😀

Updated to LGA 1366 : LINK.

Dell GX270 with Pentium-4( 2.4ghz). and 2gb ram.
Dell Nvidia Geforce-4 G4 MX440 AGP
Dell CT-0200 Sound Blaster Live 5.1

I think these are some good off the self computers for Windows98.
I bought mine some time back and some new motherboards too.
You can still find new motherboards for these computers and dell sells refurbished motherboards too.
Good stable computers. Tool less case.

E6600

Pretty sure the fastest one I have right now is running an E7600 that is slightly overclocked.

The fastest native Win98 machine I run is in my UV acrylic case LAN party rig:
Asus K8V SE Deluxe Socket 754
Athlon 64 3400+ Clawhammer
XFX 6800XT AGP
Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS
RAID0 WD Raptor 80GB SATA HDD's

Mine is my Asus CUBX based machine. I modded the board to work with Tualatin processors.

Specs:
Asus CUBX
Intel Tualatin Celeron 1.3ghz at 1.49ghz
1024MB PC-133 SD-RAM (4x256)
Seagate 250GB HD
Promise Ultra 133
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
3.5" Mitsumi Floppy
Realtek 10/100 NIC
Lite-ON DVD-RW and LG DVD-ROM
USB 2.0 PCI Card
XP / 98SE dual boot

Right now my overkill Windows 98 PC is:

Athlon-XP 2100+ Palomino
ECS K7S5A
MSI Geforce 6800GT
1 GB DDR
Generic Vortex2

I'm looking for a mobile CPU so I can use a newer power supply.

Still haven't decided on which HSF to use. Thermalright SK6 or Thermaltake Volcano 9?

At one point in time, I used the following specs on my Windows 98SE machine:

PCChips M871G
256MB DDR
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2GHz
nVidia GeForce 6200 AGP
STB BlackMagic VooDoo2 PCI 3DFX card
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1

Nowadays, the board is back in my Windows XP build.

Currently have the following Windows 98SE machines that are complete or not yet finished:

Socket 370
Shuttle AV18V31
256MB SD-RAM PC133
Intel Celeron 1.4GHz Tualatin 32KB L1 cache and 256KB L2 cache
nVidia GeForce4 Ti4400 AGP
STB BlackMagic VooDoo2 card (not working at the moment, still needs repairs)
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Platinum with the IR Driver
LG CD-RW
Samsung DVD-ROM (not working well)
Maxtor 60GB (when they bought out Quantum and the drive looked like a Quantum Fireball series) - bought new last year
Western Digital 80GB for backups (bought new)
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy drive
230W ATX PSU
NEC MultiSync LCD1850e
Compaq Keyboard and Logitech optical PS/2 mouse
Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro

Not finished project (HDD needs to be formatted and the OS needs an install):
FIC K8M-800M motherboard (pulled from an eMachines T3116)
AMD Sempron 3100+ @ 1.8GHz
512MB DDR
nVidia GeForce 6200 (might change with either the Radeon 9600XT or GeForce2 MX400 AGP card)
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
80GB HDD
Apple 32x CD-ROM
DVD-ROM
3.5" 1.44MB FDD

For the non-finished project, I'll be hooking up the 200GB HDD (32GB limit set for the Socket 7 setup) and run Norton Ghost 7.5 to copy everything to that hard drive or take the 80GB HDD, plug it into my Socket 370 system, and copy everything from there so I can have the drivers for mostly everything (need to download the KM800M drivers and the network card drivers as well).

I've dualbooted 98 and XP on a K7 Barton 2500+ with a GeForce 5950 Ultra. 98 smokes on this kind of hardware, but I seem to recall XP booting up faster.

The fastest for me was Creeping Net 2

-1988 GEM Computer Products Chassis
-150 waty custom ATXT power supply
-Intel desktop board D815EPV, i815 chipset
-Intel Pentium III 1ghz, socket 370
-512MB PC-133 RAM
-1.44 mb floppy
-40 & 80 GB ATA-133 HDD
-lite-on DVD ROM and RW drives
-NVIDIA GeForce MX4000 PCI 64MB
-Soundblaster Live 5.1 pci

This was early March 2006,it was stupid fast but also ridiculously unstable. Boot time was almost 15seconds if I recall. But it locked up and had Stack overflows regardless of BIOS settings or tweaks or weighing it down. I tried out the Vista beta on it before moving to Windows 2000 SP3 that same month, which it ran till it left in 2011.

Asus KBV-X SE socket 754
Athlon 3000+
FX Quadro 2000
512mb DDR 400mhz 2-2-5-2
120gb Kingston SSD
DVD IDE Drive
Aureal Vortex 2 PCI
Yamaha YM744 PCI
450 watt ATX power supply

Period correct.
Back in 1998-1999 I use a Intel Pentium-2 @ 400mhz.
With 128mb. Ram
6gb. IDE Hard-drive
Nvidia Riva TNT graphics card.

Athlon64 FX-60 on Asus A8V deluxe motherboard with Geforce 7800GS. Dual boot win98se/winXP.
All the devices have win9x drivers installed and working.

MSI PM8PM-V
Pentium IV 651 3.4ghz
2gb DDR2-400
Radeon X800 XT
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 + Livedrive
Yamaha YMF724
win98/xp dual boot

the win98 performance is unnecessarily fast. also doubles as a space heater, despite adequate air cooling in an antec aluminum atx case. x800 drivers and games from that general era have fewer problems under xp, which this computer is more suited for anyway.

Core2 Duo on a random Compaq box
Previous was some type of end of the line AMD Socket A pcchips fully integrated special
In my case I never really used an os past 9x

Used 2000 briefly at school
Installed XP in boxes I sold
Have Windows 7 setup but rarely use it

If you want period correct.

I just picked up a 9600XT (it was advertised as 9800XT for 20 bucks, I enquired, they corrected the ad and then I got the 9600XT for $15AUD, decent deal imo!) so my overkill W98 rig is:

Soltek SL-75FRN2-L (Nforce 2)
Athlon XP 2200+
512MB DDR
Gecube Radeon 9600XT 128MB
SB Live! (but thinking about swapping over to my Hercules Fortissimo Gamesurround 3)
64GB SSD (Sata 2) on a SATA-IDE adapter.
550w Antec modular PSU
NEC 4 port USB2.0 PCI expansion

I didn't really plan on making this pc but when I saw an ad for an athlon XP PC for $15 AUD in my suburb I couldn't say no. He even gave me an extra 3GB of ram, 2 spare PCI network cards (one was gigabit) and an extra athlon 1800+ chip for free. Good deal although the onboard sound and video had died somehow. No biggie! The original pc was the case, soltek mobo, 2200+, Radeon 9550SE, the SB live and a NIC with 1.5GB RAM. sweet.
I bought the power supply for 1$ but when i picked it up he said take it for free. OK not a problem.
The SSD came in a box of fans and cables i bought for $10. I hate seek times on spindle drives! Perfect size.

This is somehow the cheapest retro PC I have bought/made... the parts fell into my lap and it was perfect to recreate my PC I had when I was a teenager.

Fairly slow compared to most others here but it's a Tualatin 1200.

P4 with Rambus board which I overclocked a bit.
Even though the P4 does not have much appeal(when compared to a fast 486 for example) for older stuff, it's nonetheless terrific due to low cost and broad range of use.