Maingear revives 90s nostalgia with vintage-style pre-built…

(Image credit: Maingear)

Silverstone launched its retro beige FLP02 desktop PC case in 2025, and Maingear is a line of pre-built PCs that leverage the nostalgia these cases evoke. The custom PC builder calls this lineup Retro98, and it features four different models starting at $2,499. The most affordable option is already quite formidable, sporting an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU paired with an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB of DDR5 memory, and a 2TB SSD.

But if you want to go all-in on performance and style, the $9,799 Retro98a is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, an Nvidia RTX 5090, 64GB DDR5 RAM, and a 4TB SSD, and features a custom water loop to deliver maximum cooling. The coolant reservoir for the top-end pre-built is located in the 5.25-inch drive bays. At the same time, Maingear also used the classic “ketchup and mustard” color scheme for the braided power cables, reminiscent of old desktop builds from the late ‘90s and early aughts, while still avoiding the cable spaghetti you’ll usually find in them.

Maingear Retro98 Specifications

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Model	Price	GPU	CPU	Memory	Storage
Retro98a	$9,799	Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090	AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D	64GB DDR5	4TB SSD
Retro98 \| 5090	$4,999	Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090	AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D	32GB DDR5	2TB SSD
Retro98 \| 5080	$3,499	Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080	AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D	32GB DDR5	2TB SSD
Retro98 \| 5070	$2,499	Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070	Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	32GB DDR5	2TB SSD

Just like the desktops of yore, the FLP02 case used in the Retro98 PCs includes a classic rocker switch for power, key lock, reset, and turbo buttons, along with a digital LED display. The power switch, reset button, and key lock still function as before, but according to Silverstone, the digital LED display now shows the PWM fans' duty cycle, while the turbo button sets the fan speed to maximum. The front grille houses two 120mm front intakes, and there is a single 120mm fan for the rear exhaust. More importantly, the 360mm radiator with three 120mm fans sits right at the top of the case.

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Maingear Retro98 desktop PC — (Image credit: Maingear)

Maingear is offering a limited run of these classic desktops: it will release 32 units of the Retro98 AIO models and just 6 custom-loop Retro98a systems, for a total of 38 units. So, if you want to bring back the nostalgia of Windows 95 while still getting the performance you’d come to expect from a high-end desktop gaming PC from 2026, you should get one of these units as soon as you can.

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22 Comments Comment from the forums

Gururu

These got nothing on the Stout Owl. That is where PC cases need to be.
Reply
Zaranthos

I really prefer beige cases and a lot of the retro designs. I really hate that my new build didn't have HDD LED.

It also bothers me that I can't disable all the obnoxious LED lighting by default and have to run software to disable all the light pollution. Creative AE-5 Plus requires loading Sound Blaster Command after reboots or wake from sleep or the LED's are on by default.

I guess I'm not an anime kid who craves visual stimulation, see through glass computer cases, and Christmas tree lights strung all over every computer build...
Reply
das_stig

$10K really, people get a life, better things to do with that type of pay-out!
Reply
bit_user

Gururu said:
These got nothing on the Stout Owl. That is where PC cases need to be.
I saw that! What an amazing build!
Reply
bit_user

Zaranthos said:
I really hate that my new build didn't have HDD LED.
I've noticed my HDD LED doesn't blink on NVMe activity. I guess it makes sense, but at first I wondered if it was broken!

So, if it's not actually going to work, most of the time, then I guess there's not much point in having one?

Zaranthos said:
It also bothers me that I can't disable all the obnoxious LED lighting by default and have to run software to disable all the light pollution.
I buy all non-LED stuff and replace any LED fans included with my cases or CPU coolers.

Zaranthos said:
I guess I'm not an anime kid who craves visual stimulation,
Heh, I was an anime kid... But that was decades ago!
Reply
HideOut

that 10K rig is WAY overpriced. Wow
Reply
Shiznizzle

HideOut said:
that 10K rig is WAY overpriced. Wow
We are fast approaching the carbon bicycle industry levels of rip off. Tour de France bikes are now upwards of 15.000 dollars and by now far more likely to be 20.000 dollars. The manufacturers justify these prices by saying that the research and development that goes into the bikes costs so much.

I am not buying that tosh. Carbon strands is not new tech and neither are the weaves that they use. In addition the bikes are all made in china now where the labour is cheap. Maybe %1 of carbon bikes are made outside of china and they could almost justify the price at this point.

Also, there are actual cars and motorcycles who are cheaper than Tour de France bikes now so compare research and development costs of those with a piece of carbon fiber. The rest of the bike is wheels and the groupset which are out of their control

Corporations, since covid, have seen that people will pay whatever price tag they stick on things now so we are seeing all fields do this. Including spinning rust HDD manufacturers now who claim that due to "AI demand" their HDD are going up in price by a third. Non sense.

The speed at which a HDD accesses its own info is rather slow so they should show us those HDD enabled AI clusters. They cant. They do not exist and this is a classic case of everybody else is price gauging so we shall too.

Greed.

It appears i wont be buying anything else computer related after my 1440 p monitor for a long time now. I have two other backup machines capable of playing modern games now and main in in AM5.
Reply
bit_user

Shiznizzle said:
so we are seeing all fields do this. Including spinning rust HDD manufacturers now who claim that due to "AI demand" their HDD are going up in price by a third. Non sense.

The speed at which a HDD accesses its own info is rather slow so they should show us those HDD enabled AI clusters. They cant. They do not exist and this is a classic case of everybody else is price gauging so we shall too.
In one sense, it's a matter of having more data that they need to backup, and HDDs are the backup solution.

If you were right that they're just charging more because they feel like it, then we should see their unit volume decline, when they issue their quarterly reports. If they still ship about the same number of platters as before, then it means they're getting price-insensitive demand from somewhere and I don't see where else that would be than the AI/datacenter build out boom.

You have read about more datacenters getting built, right? They need to fill those with machines and those machines' data needs to get backed up somehow. So, it's really not surprising and aligns with what we've heard about demand for DRAM and SSDs.
Https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/wisconsin-towns-signed-underhanded-ndas-while-negotiating-billion-dollar-data-centers

Shiznizzle said:
Greed.
I'd just point out that market economies deal with a surge in demand by increasing prices. The communist solution is rationing. As much as I hate price spikes, I think I wouldn't want to live in a communist system. In the long run, the market economy ends up being cheaper.

BTW, did you notice how the price of HDDs crashed about 3 years ago? That's the other side of the coin. Moral of the story: stock up on these things when they get cheap, because you never know what kinds of supply shocks might come along.
Reply
LordVile

Zaranthos said:
I really prefer beige cases and a lot of the retro designs. I really hate that my new build didn't have HDD LED.

It also bothers me that I can't disable all the obnoxious LED lighting by default and have to run software to disable all the light pollution. Creative AE-5 Plus requires loading Sound Blaster Command after reboots or wake from sleep or the LED's are on by default.

I guess I'm not an anime kid who craves visual stimulation, see through glass computer cases, and Christmas tree lights strung all over every computer build...
Does the new build actually have a HDD though?
Reply
bit_user

LordVile said:
Does the new build actually have a HDD though?
With SATA SSDs (and optical drives, I might add), they still show I/O activity, which I think was the point. It's only called "HDD light" for historical reasons.

The value is that by looking at it, you can see if the computer's slowness is due to heavy I/O. Another use case for it is noticing it's going crazy and then checking Task Manager (or top, in Linux) to see what's going on. Sometimes, it'll just turn out to be a virus scanner.

Other times, it'll actually be due to a process consuming too much memory and forcing the system to start swapping. By acting swiftly, you could close the offending program, before it starves out something else and causes it to crash.
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