Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. It’s enough to turn off the parts of my brain that would normally despise the look of a big, gray, plastic box and transform me into a drooling retro devotee ready to hand over his cash just to hear those fans whir. That was my first reaction when I saw custom PC maker Maingear’s new Retro95 throwback PC case. It comes packed with the modern components you expect to see in a modern gaming rig, but it adds extras like an optical disc drive and I/O ports hidden under a flap where you’d expect to find a floppy disk drive.
The Retro95 is housed in a custom SilverStone FLP01 horizontal chassis that first hit the scene late last year. Maingear added its own embellishments, including a Windows 95-esque version of its logo above the twin USB-C ports out front. There’s a cheeky “Maingear Inside” sticker on the side of the device meant to help you reminisce when Intel stuck similar messaging on the side of every PC case. That’s a little ironic, considering the case comes with options for both AMD and Intel CPUs. You can get a version with a powerful gaming CPU like the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.
Maingear said it chose its components while keeping in mind “modern thermals,” though that will be tight considering the RTX 5080 will essentially cut off airflow between one side of the case and the other. The optical drive is large enough that it juts out and overlaps the CPU cooler by a few centimeters. The system supports Noctua fans and up to an 850W PSU, and Maingear has a strong track record on gaming rigs with some of the best cable management I’ve personally experienced on pre-built PCs, like with the company’s MG-1 PC.
Beyond aesthetics, seeing that 24x DVD-R drive is a reminder of some of my first PC builds, back when I still had enough game discs to warrant the optical drive hovering above the big block that was my HDD. As much as it might sound fun to slot in your old copy of Planescape: Torment on disc to play in the old way, you’ll run up against the mountain of compatibility issues with Windows 11 and all the new components in your rig. You’ll either need to download mods and get good at troubleshooting or else turn to services like GOG’s Good Old Games preservation service and continue to rely on digital downloads.
You could source a Blu-ray DVD player to watch a few modern films on your PC. I’m sure there are folks out there planning to complete the look with a big, blocky CRT monitor. The case starts at $1,600 without the optical drive and an RTX 5050 packed in with an AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. That would still be more than enough to make the PC into a grand emulation station for all your old-school PC titles. Getting a config with all the fixings could cost well over $3,000, which should be expected considering the standing cost of today’s high-end components. Either way, the PC will be a showpiece model with the added benefit of a modern motherboard and I/O ports. As much as the custom PC maker’s artistic Apex PCs look great, the old grey boxes will have an appeal all their own.
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