It looks like the kind of PC people would have piled in the back of their car to take to a LAN party back in the day. However, the Maingear Retro95 isn’t an actual PC from before the turn of the century, but a modern desktop that merely embraces the classic aesthetics of 90s computing.
A limited edition desktop, the pre-built PC uses a custom case clad in the likeness of horizontal 90s computers. You know… the kind you put on the desk and stack your monitor on top of. It’s even got what appears to be nonfunctional floppy disk drives, making this an absolute throwback that’s bound to appeal to older folks who lived through that era of computing.
The Maingear Retro95 uses a modified version of Silverstone’s FLP01 PC case, albeit with an even more pronounced 90s aesthetic, courtesy of the beige finish and black accents, which were very common during those times. The floppy drives are, of course, nonfunctional, since nobody uses those anymore, although one of them, apparently, houses a hidden panel with various I/O slots. The other drive is an actual usable slot, too, where you can plug in an optical drive if you want to play old DVD games or watch Blu-ray movies. Instead of housing an Intel 486 CPU like these machines probably would have back in the day, the rig can be outfitted with modern components.
As with other modern pre-built PCs, you get your choice of various configurations. At the high end, you can get it with either an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D or an Intel Core Ultra 245K CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 (no 5090 option), up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM, and up to 8TB of NVMe SSD storage. The case comes with a total of three SSD slots and one HDD slot, so you can probably fit in even more storage if you want.
The Maingear Retro95 supposedly comes with a modern airflow design that employs a pair of Noctua fans on each side, so it should manage temperature just as well as any modern PC case. It feels like a real classic horizontal PC from the 90s, too, allowing you to access the internals by simply lifting off the top lid. Granted, the layout means you’ll probably have to find space for this in your desk, which might not be the best for everyone. However, if you want to relive those nascent years of PC gaming every time you boot up your desktop, we doubt anything will come close to the nostalgia this can deliver.
When we first saw the photos of this PC, we thought it will come with a monitor styled in that massive CRT housing. Turns out, that’s just for the photos, so you’ll have to pair it with a modern productivity or gaming monitor like any desktop setup. According to the outfit, the PC is strictly limited edition, so you better grab one if you want it, as they claim they won’t do a second production run after this initial launch runs out.
The Maingear Retro95 is available now, priced starting at $1,599.
