MAINGEAR Drops Retro95: A 90s Throwback with 2025 Firepower

[TheLostSwede]

MAINGEAR, the leader in premium-quality, high-performance gaming PCs, today announced Retro95, a limited-edition PC drop that brings back the unmistakable style of a '90s-era horizontal desktop, now supercharged with cutting-edge hardware. Built for gamers who remember LAN parties, floppy disks, dial-up, and CD-based drivers, Retro95 is a nostalgic love letter to the golden age of PC gaming, reimagined for today's most demanding titles.

With its beige finish, boxy profile, and horizontal layout, Retro95 looks like it booted straight out of 1995, but don't let the exterior fool you. Inside, it can be configured with some of today's most powerful components, including CPU options from AMD and Intel, up to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, 96 GB of DDR5 memory, 8 TB of Gen 4 NVMe storage, Noctua fans and an 850 W PSU. Retro95 may flaunt '90s flair, but it's also engineered with modern thermals and whisper-quiet air cooling for high performance with low noise.




"This one is for the gamers who lugged CRTs to LAN parties, swapped out disks between levels, and got their gaming news from magazines. The Retro95 drop is our way of honoring the classic era of gaming, with a system that looks like the one you had as a kid, but runs like the monster you'd spec from MAINGEAR today," said Wallace Santos, MAINGEAR CEO and founder.

With its hidden front-panel I/O, and modern airflow tucked behind its nostalgic shell, the Retro95 is both a sleeper and a showpiece. Feel inspired to dust off some of those classic titles? No problem, this rig can even be optioned with a DVD drive.

Like all MAINGEAR gaming PCs, every component is handpicked and thoroughly tested for maximum compatibility, reliability, and performance. All MAINGEAR PCs are hand-built by expert MAINGEAR builders in New Jersey, and undergo rigorous testing and quality assurance checks to uphold MAINGEAR's unparalleled dedication to excellence. Standing behind their products, every MAINGEAR PC is backed by a standard one-year warranty (upgradable to three years) and lifetime access to MAINGEAR's award-winning technical support.

Starting at $1,599, the Retro95 is available exclusively at www.MAINGEAR.com starting July 23, 2025, as part of a limited drop. Once they're gone, it's game over.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Chaitanya]

Its that Silverstone FLP01 chassis isnt it?

Edit: really tempted to get one, if it came with Sony Trinitron CRT monitor.

Edit2 : just tried configurator and price markups are quite absurd. ~1600$ for PC with 9600X, RTX 5050, 16GB RAM, cheap OEM B650 board and 1TB SSD.

 

[LabRat 891]

Glad to see Silverstone made a good quantity of / are still making this (FLP01) case.

edit: no AMD options whatsoever in the configurator, is dissapointing. With the 7/23 release date, I was hoping they'd offer a R9700 option.

 

[GerKNG]

ryzen 5 with a RTX 5050, 650w PSU, cheap mobo, cheap cooler and one 1TB SSD combined with 16! GB of DDR5 for 1600 bucks... no idea what else gets on top of that like taxes, shipping etc. in the US.

what a joke.

 

[ZoneDymo]

now if only there was 1 single company in the world that would bring back and advance CRT's

 

[Frick]

now if only there was 1 single company in the world that would bring back and advance CRT's

Impossible, at this point. At least if the goal is to make something people can actually afford. The entire production chain is gone.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Its that Silverstone FLP01 chassis isnt it?

A slight variation apparently.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Silverstone has the exact same case, but a modern silver color and no gaudy old labels. It will only fit low form factor CPU coolers, because the optical drive opening is wedged in right above the CPU...so also make sure you don't buy really tall RAM sticks.

I like the case. I have it as the media center attached to my PC...because the lower end Intel CPUs are actually reasonably priced now and something like an ancient 1050ti can adequately act as a media and transcoding card. That said, the $1600 price point to start is just silly, given that this thing is absolutely not going to have a middle-tier (9060 or 5060 minimum) card for that price, and it's something that only nostalgia can support buying. I personally look back at the age of beige boxes and don't care. If I wanted to care I'd go to a pawn shop, buy one of the old boxes, and build my own system back into it. You could actually build something decent...but then I'd hate myself for making the market think that this was a profitable way forward.

 

[Chomiq]

Well what this will do is remind people that the case is already there and maybe they'll opt to build in it on their own. PC World even did a live stream recently where they put 9950X3D and 5090 FE in it:

 

[jak_2456]

They should have included a beige optical drive, and the lack of a constant noisy little CPU fan or crunchy-sounding hard drive will make it lack the old-school charm. It's a cool idea, but I don't completely agree with the execution.

 

[AGlezB]

Well what this will do is remind people that the case is already there and maybe they'll opt to build in it on their own. PC World even did a live stream recently where they put 9950X3D and 5090 FE in it:

That video reminded why I use modern cases: ventilation.

That case has one fan completely blocked by the PSU and the GPU is obstructing whatever air the other fan is capable of pushing. No wonder the there's a lot of thermal throttle and the whole thing sounds like a Concorde taking off. Nostalgy is fine and all but there is a reason why that type of case has been nothing more than a curiosity for a very long time.

 

[Chomiq]

That video reminded why I use modern cases: ventilation.

That case has one fan completely blocked by the PSU and the GPU is obstructing whatever air the other fan is capable of pushing. No wonder the there's a lot of thermal throttle and the whole thing sounds like a Concorde taking off. Nostalgy is fine and all but there is a reason why that type of case has been nothing more than a curiosity for a very long time.

I mean, FE is flow through, that slot on the side is for the PSU fan, the other fan can be either 120 or 80mm, the other side has slots for dual 120s and rear has slots for dual 80mm fans. It seems manageable if you know what you're doing and you plan ahead for the build.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Its that Silverstone FLP01 chassis isnt it?

Edit: really tempted to get one, if it came with Sony Trinitron CRT monitor.

Edit2 : just tried configurator and price markups are quite absurd. ~1600$ for PC with 9600X, RTX 5050, 16GB RAM, cheap OEM B650 board and 1TB SSD.

I mean, it is a boutique PC, so hefty premiums are to be expected. This is targeted at the John Doe who doesn't know how to build a machine, not us.

That video reminded why I use modern cases: ventilation.

That case has one fan completely blocked by the PSU and the GPU is obstructing whatever air the other fan is capable of pushing. No wonder the there's a lot of thermal throttle and the whole thing sounds like a Concorde taking off. Nostalgy is fine and all but there is a reason why that type of case has been nothing more than a curiosity for a very long time.

The parts picked there are too high wattage for this type of build IMHO, it'll be inevitably stuffy in there. Bring it to something more down to earth - 9800X3D and a 5070 Ti, and thermals won't be such a hard issue anymore.

 

[SilverStone Technology]

That video reminded why I use modern cases: ventilation.

That case has one fan completely blocked by the PSU and the GPU is obstructing whatever air the other fan is capable of pushing. No wonder the there's a lot of thermal throttle and the whole thing sounds like a Concorde taking off. Nostalgy is fine and all but there is a reason why that type of case has been nothing more than a curiosity for a very long time.

We thought it was fun to include our fastest spinning 80mm fans for their build to showcase what we have. You actually don't need to have that much cooling power to make the system work. Linus' build with similar spec. showed the system can handle pretty high end build without going "Concord" mode!

 

[Octavean]

One dollar will get you this fake gag dollar-- fool your friends into thinking you've got a real dollar,......

Seriously, why not just dig up an old PC case or buy one for essentially the price of shipping and retrofit your new build in that? There is more then one way to stealth a PC. Back in the day I built an AMD AthlonXP system in a Dell Dell Dimension XPS D266 case. I thought it was funny because Dell wouldn't sell AMD systems at the time.

 

[AGlezB]

I mean, FE is flow through, that slot on the side is for the PSU fan, the other fan can be either 120 or 80mm, the other side has slots for dual 120s and rear has slots for dual 80mm fans. It seems manageable if you know what you're doing and you plan ahead for the build.

If you know what you're doing you're not going to build that case with a 5090+9950X3D. At least not without OLLC.

The FLP01 uses the same layout as the GD09 which debuted in 2012 and was designed when CPUs and GPUs had small aluminum heatsinks with 80mm fans and the GPUs where barely longer than a PCI-E x16 slot and you could power the most demanding high-end build with a 600W PSU and still had power to spare. Just look at the TDP of the most power hungry hardware released in 2012:

• Intel Core i7 3970X: 150W
• GeForce GTX 690: 300W

That's about how much TDP you can throw in that case without thermal throttling.

The parts picked there are too high wattage for this type of build IMHO, it'll be inevitably stuffy in there. Bring it to something more down to earth - 9800X3D and a 5070 Ti, and thermals won't be such a hard issue anymore.

My point is there are way better case choices for whatever build you want to make. The is FLP01 is a case you buy because you feel nostalgic or because you urgently need a case and the FLP01 is the only one available in a 5,000 mile radius because the apocalypse began and PC parts retailers are no longer operating.

We thought it was fun to include our fastest spinning 80mm fans for their build to showcase what we have. You actually don't need to have that much cooling power to make the system work. Linus' build with similar spec. showed the system can handle pretty high end build without going "Concord" mode!

You included your "fastest spinning 80mm fans" and the build still thermal throttled. Because:

1. You have to do a left-to-right airflow build with only the forward left fan to cool both CPU and GPU. EDIT: See #4 regarding the rear fans.
2. The dust filters are very restrictive. I'm refering to plastic área vs hole area ratio. They look like 60% plastic, 40% hole (feel free to point out the exact ratio) so the airflow is not going to be good regardless of the type of fan you use.
3. If you're using the drive cage the forward right fan is mostly blocked.
4. If you're using a 5000 series GPU with a pass-through design that just means the CPU will only get the hot exhaust air from the GPU. You can use the rear 80mm fans to push air into the CPU but might run into recirculation issues if the fans on the right side cannot extract the air fast enough.

So yes, you can "make the system work". The question is if you can do it without thermal throttling and without too much fan noise.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

That video reminded why I use modern cases: ventilation.

That case has one fan completely blocked by the PSU and the GPU is obstructing whatever air the other fan is capable of pushing. No wonder the there's a lot of thermal throttle and the whole thing sounds like a Concorde taking off. Nostalgy is fine and all but there is a reason why that type of case has been nothing more than a curiosity for a very long time.

You...really don't know what you are talking about on this one.

There are 4 slots for 120mm fans. There's two slots for...I think they were 80mm fans, right above the motherboard behind the CPU and above the backplate. If you want to install a low form factor fan, I think the area above the PSU can fit another 80mm...though I wouldn't count on it.

Combine this with the fan for your CPU cooler, the fans on your GPU, and the fans in your PSU and the box doesn't get too toasty at all. There would be cause for some alarm with the optical drive and a full size hard drive installed....which does make that area a bit cramped, but pull at the CPU end and push and the PSU end makes this case less of a sweat box and more of a slightly uncomfortably warm situation (I did try it with a 3070 for a little while, before deciding that the 1050ti was more than enough).

 

[AGlezB]

You...really don't know what you are talking about on this one.

There are 4 slots for 120mm fans. There's two slots for...I think they were 80mm fans, right above the motherboard behind the CPU and above the backplate. If you want to install a low form factor fan, I think the area above the PSU can fit another 80mm...though I wouldn't count on it.

Combine this with the fan for your CPU cooler, the fans on your GPU, and the fans in your PSU and the box doesn't get too toasty at all. There would be cause for some alarm with the optical drive and a full size hard drive installed....which does make that area a bit cramped, but pull at the CPU end and push and the PSU end makes this case less of a sweat box and more of a slightly uncomfortably warm situation (I did try it with a 3070 for a little while, before deciding that the 1050ti was more than enough).

There's a lot you're not saying like what CPU, CPU cooler, fans, fan speeds, noise levels, etc. so it's hard to tell.
From what I understand even after optimizing airflow and downgrading the hardware to a low-end GPU from 9 years ago with a 75W TDP you still get a "slightly uncomfortably warm situation".
Did I get it right? Or was the "slightly uncomfortably warm situation" with the 3070's 220 W TDP?
And did all that contradict my point that modern cases are better designed in terms of ventilation? I don't think so.

Computer cases are constantly improving both in design and functionality. You can defend the FLP01 all you want but the fact remains it's an obsolete design and has been so for the better part of a decade. In 2025 that case is just another niche product targeted at middle aged geeks with disposable income and more nostalgia than common sense.

EDIT: BTW I'm still waiting for Gamer's Nexus review. Steve said in 2024 they would test the case if it became available in the US.

 

[TechLurker]

now if only there was 1 single company in the world that would bring back and advance CRT's

Impossible, at this point. At least if the goal is to make something people can actually afford. The entire production chain is gone.

While impossible to modernize, at least without a major breakthrough in quantum sciences such that we can make displays that have the unique traits of CRTs without the bulky elements, if one has the cash, there's Dotronix, which IIRC salvages old CRT TVs, repairs and updates their supporting electronics, and manufactures new enclosures for them. Most of their CRT builds are for museums and some niches that requires CRTs over regular LCDs or LEDs. Someone on /r/crtgaming once reached out; the price for a 27" was around 2100 USD back in 2021. There was talks about Dotronix possibly doing a gaming-oriented run of remanufactured CRT TVs, but the deal fell through.

/r/crtgaming also found some obscure Chinese OEM that still manufactured small CRTs and would slap on any label the buyer wanted if they ordered in buys of 1000 at a time. I don't recall the name of the company though, and they were reportedly still making CRTs back in 2020. I'm not sure they're still around, but if so, that's impressive. I'd have to wonder what markets still make active use of CRTs enough to keep a tiny production line open, aside from producing replacement screens for real old government or medical equipment.