Nord Three | RTX 5080 16GB + Ryzen 7 9800X3D | Ready-to-Go Gaming PC | PC36

🌲 Nord Three

4K, and nobody would guess

Nord Three is the top of this series and it is an odd machine in the best way. There is an RTX 5080 and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D behind that walnut front, which is enough to play anything made today at 4K, and from across the room it looks like a speaker cabinet.

It is also cooled entirely by air. No pump, no radiator, no tubing, nothing that can leak or wear out. A twin tower cooler on a chip that does not draw much power, two 140mm intakes pulling through the wood, and one exhaust at the back. That is the whole thermal design, and at this power level in a case this size it is genuinely sufficient.

Everything here is chosen to be quiet first and fast second, on the basis that at this tier the machine is fast either way.

🧬 Built to last, designed to evolve

This system is built on AMD's latest AM5 platform, which offers one of the best upgrade paths available today. That means you can start with a great processor now and still have room to move up the stack later, while keeping the same motherboard, case, power supply and most of your core components. On this build the processor and board are already close to the top of what AM5 offers, so what the upgrade path really buys you is the freedom to change the graphics card in a few years without touching anything else.

📃 Specifications

• 🧠 CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 8 cores, 16 threads of Zen 5 with 96MB of L3 cache, using second-generation 3D V-Cache mounted underneath the cores rather than on top of them
  • AMD's flagship gaming processor. In any title that is even slightly CPU-sensitive that stacked cache shows up in the frame times rather than just the marketing
  • The cache position matters more than it sounds. On the 7800X3D the cache sat above the cores, which trapped heat and forced AMD to lock the multiplier. Moving it underneath solved both problems, so unlike its predecessor this chip is fully unlocked and can genuinely be overclocked. That is why Ultimate Performance Tune means something on this listing and does not on Nord Two
  • Efficient for what it is. It draws more than a 7800X3D but far less than a comparable Intel part, which is a large part of why an air cooler is sufficient here
  • Paired with the 5080, this is a processor that will not be the limiting factor at 1440p or 4K for a long time
• ❄️ CPU cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • A twin tower air cooler with six heatpipes and two 120mm PWM fans, 155mm tall. It handles a 9800X3D comfortably and it does so quietly
  • Air rather than liquid, deliberately. An AIO would look the part but it would not perform better here, and it introduces a pump that will eventually fail on a machine we warrant for three years. The North also caps top radiators at 240mm and imposes a 35mm component height limit when one is fitted, so a front-mounted radiator would be the only realistic option and that costs graphics card clearance. Air is the better engineering answer in this specific case, not the cheaper one
  • Plain black, no lighting, matched to the rest of the build
  • Mounted with Thermalright's own paste, applied by hand rather than using a pre-applied pad
  • If you want to go further on noise, the Noctua Pure Silence upgrade below replaces this with an NH-D15 G2 chromax.black. Read the note about clearance before you take it
• 🔲 Motherboard: ASRock B850 Riptide WiFi (ATX)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 14+2+1 phase power design with 80A DrMOS on Vcore and SOC. Plain English translation: overkill power handling, which means any socket AM5 processor will run beautifully in this board, whether you overclock now or move up the stack in a few years
  • PCIe 5.0 x16 for the graphics card. We specify a Gen5 slot on every RTX 5080 and 5090 build, so the slot is ready for the generation of cards after this one as well as the one fitted today
  • Four M.2 slots, one of them PCIe Gen5 x4, on an 8-layer PCB. Three drives can be added later without touching what is already installed
  • Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet onboard. This is the step up from the board used in Nord One and Two, which are gigabit only
  • PC36 only uses motherboards chosen for stability and longevity. See our Trusted brands page
• 📏 Memory / RAM: 32GB (2×16GB) DDR5-6000 CL36
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • EXPO-tuned dual channel DDR5-6000 CL36, the speed and timing combination Ryzen responds to best on AM5. We fit CL36 as standard rather than the slower CL40 kits often used at this price
  • 32GB is comfortable headroom for gaming, streaming and creative work at the same time. Two of the four slots stay free, so capacity can be added later rather than replaced
  • Worth a note on this specific case: the North limits motherboard component height to 35mm if a top radiator is fitted. We are not fitting one, so we are free to use ordinary heatspreader memory rather than low-profile kits
  • Specification guaranteed, model may vary. Happy to confirm the exact part on request
• 💾 Storage: 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD (TLC)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • TLC flash rated at 6,500MB/s or better, which holds its speed through long sustained writes rather than dropping off once a cache fills. On a build at this price we do not fit QLC drives
  • Higher write endurance than the entry-tier alternative, which matters if you capture at 4K, edit video, or install and uninstall a lot
  • Three further M.2 slots sit free, one of them Gen5, plus room for four more drives in the case
  • Specification guaranteed, model may vary. Happy to confirm the exact part on request
• 🎮 Graphics card: NVIDIA RTX 5080 16GB (shipped separately for safety, see below)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • This is a bulky and valuable graphics card, and as such it will be shipped separately with instructions for you to install it upon receipt
  • To be clear about what that means: the card is fitted into this exact system, stress tested in it, and only then carefully removed and boxed for transit. Your machine is built and validated as a whole. We do not drop-ship graphics cards or send you parts to assemble
  • Genuine 4K ultra performance in modern AAA titles, with the ray tracing hardware and DLSS 4 multi frame generation to keep path-traced games playable rather than theoretical
  • 16GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, feeding textures fast enough that 4K stops being the thing limiting your settings
  • Around 360W under load, which is the largest single heat source in the machine by a wide margin and the reason the front intakes matter more than the cooler does
  • The case takes cards up to 355mm long. Most 5080s are comfortably inside that, but not all of them, so we source models that fit rather than making it your problem
  • The chipset and VRAM are guaranteed: it will always be an RTX 5080 with 16GB. The AIB brand varies with availability, and we only use established manufacturers. See our Trusted brands page for more info
• 🧰 Case: Fractal North, Charcoal Black with walnut front and dark tinted glass
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 447 × 215 × 469mm. Steel chassis, real American black walnut front slats, and a dark tinted tempered glass side panel. The walnut is genuine wood, not a printed finish, so every one is slightly different
  • The wood is not just decoration. Behind the slats sit a steel mesh and a nylon dust filter, and the front intake pulls air straight through the gaps between them. The whole front panel lifts off to clean the filter
  • Brass-coloured accents on the power button and the front trim, which is the detail that stops it looking like a black box with a plank on it
  • Graphics cards up to 355mm, CPU coolers up to 170mm, seven expansion slots
  • Front I/O is USB-C, two USB 3.0 Type-A, and separate headphone and microphone jacks
  • Dust filters at the front and under the power supply. Takes ATX, micro-ATX and Mini-ITX boards
  • Reviewers consistently find this case cools better than a wood-fronted design has any right to. It is not a Meshify and we would not claim it is, but a 45 litre case with two 140mm intakes and a short path to the exhaust is a perfectly sound home for a 5080
• 🌬️ Case cooling: 2 × 140mm front intake (included with the case) plus 1 × 120mm rear exhaust fitted by us
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • The North ships with two Fractal Aspect 14 PWM fans already in the front, drawing cool air in through the walnut and straight onto the graphics card. They are proper PWM fans rather than the three-pin fans usually bundled, so they can be slowed right down when the machine is idle
  • It does not ship with a rear fan, which surprises most people who buy one. Every Nord we build gets a 120mm exhaust fitted at the back as standard. On this tier in particular, giving the heat off a twin tower cooler a direct route out matters
  • The glass-panel version of this case does not include Fractal's fan hub, which only comes with the mesh-panel model. With three fans that makes no practical difference, so we wire them to the motherboard headers and tune the curves there instead. Worth knowing if you ever add more fans yourself
  • All fans are plain black and non-RGB. Fan curves are set by hand before dispatch and verified through our standard stress testing rather than assumed
  • Being straight about expectations: this is a 360W graphics card in a case chosen partly for how it looks. At idle and in lighter games it is very quiet. Under a sustained heavy load you will hear it, and that is true of any 5080 in any case at this size. If near-silence under full load is the priority, read the Noctua option below, and read the honest note underneath it too
• ⚡ Power supply: Deepcool PN850D 850W 80+ Gold, ATX 3.1
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Includes a native 12V-2x6 PCIe 5.1 cable rated to the full 600W. That is the connector the RTX 5080 uses, so the card plugs straight in with no adaptor and no dongle in the loop
  • 80+ Gold, and independently rated Gold by Cybenetics as well. Cybenetics test across the full load range rather than at three fixed points, which makes it the harder badge of the two to earn. It is also the quieter of the two ratings to satisfy, which is why it is on this listing rather than a louder unit with the same 80+ badge
  • ATX 3.1 certified, built to absorb the brief power spikes a card of this class produces rather than tripping over them
  • 850W gives the 5080 and the 9800X3D comfortable headroom, with room left for an overclock
  • Fixed cables rather than modular, and in this case that is the right call. The North mounts the supply on the floor under a solid shroud, so the cables this build does not use go into dead space where nothing is visible through the glass and nothing blocks airflow. A modular unit would cost more and look identical once the panel is on
  • Backed by a 10 year manufacturer warranty. That length of cover is not something a manufacturer offers on a unit it expects to see returned
• 🔌 Cabling: Black cabling, routed and tied
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  • Black cables throughout, matched to the black interior. Routed behind the motherboard tray through the case's own channel and tied down, then the excess is folded into the power supply shroud
  • The North gives 30mm of space behind the tray, which is workable rather than generous. On a build with a 12V-2x6 cable and an 850W loom to hide, this is the most time-consuming part of the assembly. That time is included in the price
  • Braided cable extensions in a colour of your choice are available. See the upgrade options below
• 📶 WiFi / Bluetooth / Ethernet: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, included
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Built into the ASRock B850 Riptide WiFi. No separate adapter needed, and the aerial is supplied in the box
  • Wi-Fi 7 with the 6GHz band, which is usually far less congested than 2.4 and 5GHz if your router supports it
  • 2.5 Gigabit wired Ethernet, which is a genuine step up from the gigabit ports on Nord One and Two and worth having if you move large files around a home network
• 🪟 Operating system: As chosen by you from the listing options below. Windows 11 Home (OEM) is recommended.
• 🧹 Setup and optimisation: PC36 High-Class Standard. Full stress test with certificate, bloat-free installation, and BIOS set up properly
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  PC36 High-Class Standard, included free with every build

  • Ready the moment you open the box. Your PC boots straight into Windows with a local account already set up. No account sign-in wall, no first-run questionnaire, no half-hour of setup before you can use the machine you just bought
  • BIOS updated and configured properly: manual fan curves, PBO enabled, EXPO enabled, Secure Boot enabled
  • Vanilla Windows 11 installation if you choose Windows, with no bloatware added by us, and all drivers loaded and ready to go
  • Full stress test with certificate. Every system is torture tested on CPU, RAM and GPU before dispatch, and ships with the certificate to prove it

  PC36 Premier Optimisation, available in the listing options

  • CPU tuning to bring thermals and noise down with minimal performance loss, a deeper strip and debloat of Windows, and the case fans tuned by hand for the quietest operation the machine will hold
  • This is the option to take on this build, and it is the best value thing on the whole listing. A 9800X3D responds very well to a per-core Curve Optimiser undervolt, which drops temperature and noise at once, and a hand-built fan profile does more for how this machine sounds than any component swap costing three times as much

  PC36 Ultimate Performance Tune, available in the listing options

  • Advanced overclocking: memory tune, CPU tune and GPU overclock on top of everything in Premier
  • Unlike the 7800X3D in Nord Two, the 9800X3D is genuinely unlocked, so the CPU portion of this is a real overclock rather than an undervolt. Combined with a memory tune and a GPU overclock there is measurable performance in it on this machine, and the 850W supply and this cooler have the headroom to support it. This is one of the listings where Ultimate earns its money
• 🛡️ Warranty: 3 years parts & labour (return to base)
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  • Standard 3-year coverage included, parts and labour both
  • Optional extended warranties in the listing options below

👁️ Transparency notes

• The graphics card ships in its own box to protect the PCIe connector in transit, with instructions for fitting it (click or tap to read more)

  This PC contains a large and high value graphics card. All graphics cards have a point of weakness at the PCIe connector, and shipping the card in its own box prevents damage that can happen in transit despite our industry-leading packaging. It arrives with simple instructions and fitting it takes a couple of minutes. If you have any queries about this, please contact us. This is without doubt the safest method to ensuring your high performance graphics card arrives pristine.

• The walnut front is real wood, so grain and shade vary from one case to the next (click or tap to read more)

  Yours will not look exactly like the photographs, which is the nature of the material rather than a fault.

• Product images are representative photos of a similar spec in the same style. Your PC will look similar but not identical. Our support team can help clarify anything you're unsure of.

🛠️ Popular upgrade options

• Quick-add upgrades. This listing has a set of one-click upgrades chosen to fit this exact build, each one priced, in the Quick-add Upgrades section on this page. Memory, storage, optimisation, the anti-sag bracket and the extended warranty are in the build options instead. Anything not shown in either place, ask us on live chat and we will price it.
• PC36 Noctua Pure Silence: available in the listing options below.
  Click or tap for more info

  Every fan in the machine replaced with Noctua NF-A12x25 G2, the cooler changed to a Noctua NH-D15 G2 chromax.black, and a BIOS profile built specifically around them with very quiet fan curves and the processor's power handling tuned to match. No upgrade can make a PC truly silent, but this is as close as current hardware gets.

  Two things worth knowing before you take it. First, the Noctua set is 120mm throughout, so the case's two 140mm front intakes are replaced by three 120mm fans. On this particular case that works in your favour, because the North's front takes three 120mm mounts and you end up with more fans rather than fewer. Second, the NH-D15 G2 stands 168mm tall against this case's 170mm limit. It fits, but with two millimetres to spare, so it is not a cooler you would want to swap around casually afterwards.

  And the honest part: almost nobody buys this, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Premier Optimisation tunes the fans already in the machine for the quietest operation they will hold, costs a fraction of this, and gets you most of the way there. Take Premier first. Take this one only if you have taken Premier and still want more.

• Storage upgrade to 2TB: available in the listing options below.
  Click or tap for more info

  Worth it for most people buying at this level, and the upgrade we would recommend first after Premier Optimisation. Modern AAA installs regularly run past 150GB each, and 4K capture fills a 1TB drive faster than you expect. You can defer it, since three M.2 slots stay free, one of them Gen5.

• Memory upgrade to 48GB or 64GB: available in the listing options below.
  Click or tap for more info

  Worth it if you edit video, run virtual machines or work with large 3D scenes. For gaming, including heavily modded gaming, 32GB is not the limit on this machine. Two slots stay free, so this is genuinely a decision you can defer, though buying a matched four-stick set later is harder to stabilise than choosing a larger pair now.

• Graphics card upgrade to RTX 5090 32GB: choose it from the quick-add upgrades, or speak with us via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  Possible, and it needs a larger power supply fitted at the same time. Worth it only if you want 32GB of VRAM for 3D, local AI or heavy video work, or if you run a 4K display at a very high refresh rate. For gaming alone the 5080 already handles 4K at high settings, and the money is better spent on the monitor. Talk to us and we will be straight about what it would and would not change.

• Braided cable extensions: available in the listing options below.
  Click or tap for more info

  Worth considering on this build, because the tinted glass panel puts the cabling on show in a way our solid-panel cases do not. Sleeved extensions in a colour that picks up the walnut look genuinely good here. Purely cosmetic.

• Extended warranty: available in the listing options below.
• Anything else: speak with us via live chat. We build these to order, so most things are possible if you ask before you buy.

🎯 What is this PC best for?

• 4K gaming at high to ultra settings in modern AAA titles
• High refresh 1440p, where the 9800X3D's cache sets the ceiling rather than the graphics card
• Ray tracing and path tracing with DLSS 4 multi frame generation
• Streaming, recording and video work, with the encoder and the cores to do it while playing
• Living rooms, studios and offices where a flagship PC has to look like it belongs in the room
• Buyers who want the performance without the pump, the tubing or the lighting

📊 Performance estimates

Figures are given at both 1440p and 4K. Performance varies with game updates, maps, settings and background apps. These are estimates, not guarantees.

Fortnite - Competitive Settings (click or tap to expand)

1440p: 350-450 FPS
4K: 200-260 FPS
Native testing (no upscaling or frame generation).

Cyberpunk 2077 - Ray Tracing Medium (click or tap to expand)

1440p: 140-180 FPS
4K: 90-120 FPS
Upscaling set to Auto (DLSS / FSR / XeSS based on GPU).

Battlefield 6 - High Settings (click or tap to expand)

1440p: 170-210 FPS
4K: 95-125 FPS
Native testing (no upscaling or frame generation).

DaVinci Resolve - PugetBench Standard (click or tap to expand)

Estimated score: 10,000-11,000

💬 Need help?

Not sure if this is the right spec for you? Ping us on live chat and we'll help you choose the perfect PC for your games, work and budget. You'll be talking to one of us, not a chatbot.