Nostalgia is a word derived from the Greek terms for “homecoming” and “pain,” and it was originally coined as a debilitating medical condition for homesick soldiers. Today, it’s a marketing gimmick. But I get the feeling that many PC gamers will like Silverstone’s upcoming FLP02 case anyway because it’s shaping up to be an absolute unit of an enclosure.
We spotted this follow-up to Silverstone’s retro beige FLP01 earlier this year, swapping the horizontal design of the way, way back for the vertical “CPU towers” of the late 80s and 90s. The case now has a landing page on Silverstone’s US site and a spec sheet to go along with it—and oh boy, is it turning some heads.
The front of the case obviously has a lot going on with those triple faux floppy drives. But if you want to put real stuff in there, you can take out the blanks and you’ve got three 5.25-inch external bays ready to take disc drives, giant banks of USB ports, or anything else you can fit in.
Silverstone
The bottom panel with its giant power button and retro “turbo” button is actually an integrated fan controller, complete with two-digit LED readout and a functional lock with a key. But if you need a little extra connection without tracking down a 5.25-inch adapter, don’t worry, there are two USB-A, one USB-C, and a headphone jack hiding underneath a subtle magnetic latch just above the external drive bays. Easy removable mesh dust catchers are installed at the top, bottom, and front.
But what about the inside, where all your modern ATX gear is supposed to go? Well, fear not! It’s got more living space than the average Manhattan studio. Mounting is available for six fans, mixing 120mm and 140mm, with the top spaced for a triple-fan AIO cooler with a 360mm radiator. The oh-so-modern dedicated power supply area at the bottom can handle up to 250mm of chunky goodness, and you’ve got space for three 3.5-inch hard drives and two 2.5-inch SSDs mounted to the back. (Again, adapters for those triple 5.25-inch external bays should shore up any shortcomings.) The case can handle massive graphics cards up to 386mm long, and there’s a support arm in the box.
Silverstone
How much is all this going to cost you? Well, that might be the painful part. According to Tom’s Hardware, Silverstone is eyeing up a $220 price in the US. That’s enough to get you a very high-end modern case with every feature I listed above and then some… albeit without those lovely 5.25-inch bays or a physical lock.
It should be here in the last quarter of the year, just in time to build a retro PC gaming tower for your parents that can run Doom at half a million frames per second.
