They don’t make them like they used to, or so we all thought. If you’re hankering for a return to the era of very big, very beige PC cases, then Silverstone’s new retro PC case might be just up your street. As if plucked straight from the late 1980s, the new Silverstone FLP01 is a blast from the past, being a horizontal, desktop-style case coming in the first quarter of 2025.
It’s fair to say that the best PC case designs have moved on in the last few decades, where RGB rules the roost in most gaming builds. While there’s certainly nostalgia for the big beige boxes of yesteryear, this new Silverstone retro PC case is one of the first modern cases to bring those original designs back to market, whether customers really want them or not.
The FLP01 originally started out as an April Fools’ joke last year on the Silverstone Japan X (previously Twitter) page. In a tweet, translated from the original Japanese, Silverstone promised a “PC case with a nostalgia feel” supporting ATX and micro-ATX motherboards, with two 5.25-inch drive bays and USB-C support. While originally confirming that it was an April Fools’ joke, a follow-up poll did ask for user feedback on what customers would like to see from an eventual release.
From that, the FLP01 was born. In a new, follow-up tweet last week, also posted on the Silverstone Japan X account, and translated from the original Japanese, Silverstone showed off a fully built demo PC the company intended to display at the company’s Japanese expo event.
There’s nothing retro about the specs in it, though, with an Asus Prime Z890 motherboard, Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU, several Crucial SSDs, 48GB of DDR5 RAM, and several other Silverstone components, including a Silverstone DA1000R Gold PSU. You can read our full Core Ultra 7 265K review to see how we got on with this CPU. The case measures 17.32 x 14.25 x 6.69 inches in size, making it pretty big by modern standards too.
That particular PC isn’t going on sale (as far as we know), but it demonstrates the kind of gaming PC that you could build using a case designed specifically to closely match the classic NEC PC-9800 PCs from Japan in the 80s and 90s. According to a report by Japanese website ascii.jp, the final product is going to look slightly different to the prototype demonstrated last week, with the color scheme appearing to have more of an ivory tone, to more closely match the color of the PC-9800.
According to ascii.jp, the FLP01 is already in mass production and heading for a Japanese release in Q1 2025, costing 19,800 yen, or around $130 at current rates. There isn’t any information so far about a launch outside of Japan, but if the demand is there, a wider release could follow. It might be based on a popular Japanese design, but Western PC builders of a certain age will also be familiar with this type of case layout and color.
Retro PC case or not, if you’re looking to build your next powerhouse gaming rig, check out our how to build a gaming PC guide next. It talks you through all of the steps you’ll need to take, from picking out your components to battling through the Windows installer at the end.
