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

🪓 Viking Five

An RTX 5080 and a 9800X3D, in twenty-six litres, cooled entirely by air

Viking Five is the top of this range and it is the machine that proves the point of it. A Ryzen 7 9800X3D and an RTX 5080 in a 26 litre case with a walnut front, no liquid cooling, no lighting, and two 120mm fans plus a dual-tower cooler doing all of the work.

The temptation at this level is to make a flagship look like one. We have gone the other way. This is a genuine 4K machine that sits on a desk looking like a small wooden box, and the only way to tell what is in it is to read the spec.

The 9800X3D is the second generation of AMD's cache design, and the change from the first is not just speed. AMD moved the cache underneath the cores rather than above them, which is why this one is fully unlocked when the 7800X3D is not.

🧬 Built to last, designed to evolve

Built on AMD's AM5 platform, which AMD have committed to supporting into 2027 and beyond. This board carries four DDR5 slots with two free, three M.2 slots with two free, PCIe 5.0 to the graphics card and Wi-Fi 7. The power supply is 850W with a native 12V-2x6 cable and a seven year warranty. There is very little in this machine that would need replacing before you wanted to replace it.

📃 Specifications

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

  • 8 cores, 16 threads of Zen 5, boosting to 5.2GHz, with 96MB of L3 cache
  • The best gaming processor AMD make for most people, and the reason is the cache. Games ask for the same small pieces of data repeatedly. The larger the cache, the less of that has to go out to memory, which is why an X3D chip beats processors with more cores and higher clocks in games while losing to them in rendering
  • The real change from the 7800X3D, and it is not just speed. AMD moved the cache stack from above the cores to underneath them. That means the cores sit next to the heatspreader instead of behind a layer of cache, so heat gets out properly, and this chip is fully multiplier unlocked where the 7800X3D is not. It is the first X3D processor you can overclock in the ordinary sense
  • Runs unrestricted here. No power cap is applied to this build, unlike our smallest chassis, because a 155mm dual-tower cooler fed directly by the rear intake has the headroom to let it run
  • If you want the 9850X3D instead, we can build it. Drop us a message on live chat and we will talk you through whether the difference is worth it for what you play, rather than quoting you a number
• ❄️ CPU cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120, black
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • A 155mm dual-tower air cooler with six heatpipes and two 120mm PWM fans, in the plain black finish rather than a lit one
  • This cooler has a reputation because it deserves one. It performs within a couple of degrees of coolers costing three times as much, and in a series built around quiet it is the obvious choice
  • Two towers and two fans means the heat is spread across far more surface area, which means both fans can turn slowly. Slow fans are quiet fans, and that is the entire point
  • Both fans are fitted reversed, pulling from the rear intake and moving air forward across the board. The cooler itself is mounted the normal way up. A dual-tower fin stack is symmetrical so this costs nothing thermally, and there is more on why we do it in the case cooling notes below
  • 155mm tall against 165mm of clearance in this case. It fits with room to spare, which is not true of every mATX chassis this size
  • Mounted with fresh paste applied by hand rather than the pre-applied pad
• 🔲 Motherboard: ASRock B850M Riptide WiFi (micro-ATX)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • PCIe 5.0 x16 for the graphics card, with 15 micron gold-plated contacts. Gen5 x16 is optional on B850 and plenty of boards are Gen4 only, so it is worth naming
  • 12+2+1 Dr.MOS power design, which is the heaviest power delivery of any board in this range and the reason it is here. ASRock do not publish an amperage figure for this particular board, and we are not going to borrow the figure from its full-size sibling and pretend it applies
  • Three M.2 slots. One Gen5 x4 with a heatsink, one Gen4 x4 with a heatsink, and one Gen4 x2. Worth knowing that the third of those runs at half the lanes of the others, so a very fast drive fitted there would run at roughly half speed. We use the Gen5 slot, so it does not affect this build
  • Four DDR5 slots supporting up to 256GB, two of them free on this build
  • Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, which is a genuine step above the Wi-Fi 6E on the boards below it in this range. 2x2 rather than a 320MHz flagship module, and still comfortably the fastest wireless in the Viking series
  • 2.5 Gigabit Realtek Dragon Ethernet
  • Realtek ALC1220 audio. This is a real step up from the ALC897 on the other boards in this range, roughly 120dB signal-to-noise against 97dB. If you use the board's own audio output rather than a USB headset, this is the one board in the range where that is a genuinely good idea
  • Rear I/O includes a 10Gbps USB-C and a 10Gbps USB-A alongside six more USB ports, HDMI, DisplayPort 1.4 and a BIOS Flashback button
  • Four SATA ports, 8-pin plus 4-pin CPU power, a quick-release latch for the graphics card, POST status LEDs and five fan headers
  • Naming trap worth knowing about: ASRock also make a full-size ATX B850 Riptide WiFi. It is a different board with different audio, different networking and different power delivery. This is the micro-ATX one, and nothing from the ATX version's spec sheet applies to it
  • 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

  • A matched pair running in dual channel, with EXPO enabled before it ships
  • DDR5-6000 is the speed Ryzen on AM5 runs best at, and it matters slightly more with an X3D chip because the cache and the memory work as a pair
  • The board is rated to DDR5-8000 and beyond as an overclock. We fit 6000 because that is where the memory controller is happiest, not because the board cannot go further, and pushing past it usually costs stability for very little return
  • Two of the board's four slots are free, so 64GB later means adding rather than replacing
  • 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

  • Rated at 6,500MB/s or better, fitted in the board's Gen5 slot under its heatsink
  • A TLC drive. It holds its speed through long sustained writes instead of dropping off once its cache fills, and it has considerably higher write endurance than the QLC drives lower down this range
  • We fit 1TB as standard right across the Viking range rather than scaling it with price, and that is a deliberate decision we will defend. It keeps our machines directly comparable to one another, and storage is the one upgrade that is genuinely trivial to do later or to take now. The 2TB option is below, and on this machine we would say take it
  • Two of the board's three M.2 slots are free, and the case takes three more drives besides
  • Specification guaranteed, model may vary. Happy to confirm the exact part on request
• 🎮 Graphics card: NVIDIA RTX 5080 16GB
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Blackwell architecture with 16GB of GDDR7. A 4K card at high settings in current titles, and an extremely comfortable 1440p one
  • DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation. At this tier it is what turns heavy ray tracing from something you benchmark into something you leave switched on permanently
  • The strongest ray tracing hardware in this range by a clear margin. If ray tracing is why you are buying a machine at this level, this is the one
  • Ninth-generation NVENC with AV1, the best encoder available for streaming and recording
  • Fitting a card this size in 26 litres is the interesting part. The power supply in this case sits at the front, which means its depth trades directly against how long a graphics card can be. We use a 140mm power supply for exactly that reason, and we have built and tested this configuration with RTX 5080 cards. It fits, it is not a squeeze, and we would not sell it if it were
  • 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: Lian Li A3-mATX, black with a walnut front
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 443 × 194 × 321.5mm, 26.3 litres. A micro-ATX case that is actually small, rather than a mid tower with the top cut off. It sits on a desk without dominating it
  • Designed with DAN Cases, who have spent years on small-form-factor layouts, and it shows in how much fits inside for the volume. Steel and aluminium, with real black walnut slats across the front
  • The front panel is decorative, and we would rather tell you that than let you assume otherwise. There are no fan mounts behind it. The mounts are three at the top, three in the floor, three on the side and one at the rear, and the front is where the power supply lives. That single fact decides how this machine is cooled, and the cooling notes below explain exactly what we do about it
  • Mesh side panels as standard, both sides. Lian Li sell a tempered glass left panel as an accessory, and we have deliberately left the side fan mount empty across the whole Viking range so that upgrade is a straight swap with nothing to undo first
  • An anti-sag graphics card support bracket is included in the box and we fit it. Modern cards are heavy enough to droop over a few years and this costs nothing to prevent
  • Two 2.5 inch mounts on the tray, plus one 2.5 or 3.5 inch mount in the floor
  • Front I/O is one USB-C, two USB-A and separate headphone and microphone jacks
  • Magnetic dust filter in the floor, and a second one behind the walnut slats
  • A white version with a lighter wood front exists and we are happy to build one. Ask us on live chat, there is no extra cost
• 🌬️ Case cooling: 1 × 120mm rear intake, 2 × 120mm top exhaust
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • This machine runs back to front, which is the opposite of most, and there is a reason for it. The front of this case is solid walnut with nothing behind it. Drawing air in through the front is simply not available, so we do not pretend otherwise. Instead the rear panel becomes the intake. It is heavily vented around its fan mount and it sits directly opposite the processor socket, so it feeds the cooler straight on
  • The processor cooler's fans are turned round to match. The cooler itself is mounted the normal way up. Only the fans are reversed, so instead of pushing air towards the rear of the case they pull it from the rear and move it forward across the board. A tower fin stack is symmetrical, so this costs nothing thermally, and it means the processor gets ambient air straight off the intake rather than air that has already been warmed by something else
  • The top exhaust sits forward, after the cooler in the airflow path, and the placement is the whole point. Put a top fan before the cooler and it lifts the fresh intake air straight out of the case before the cooler ever sees it. Put it after, and it clears the one part of this chassis that does not move air on its own: the pocket behind that solid front panel
  • Three fans, all 120mm, all plain black and all fitted by us. The second top fan is here because a card of this size puts noticeably more heat into the case than the tiers below, and the extra extraction keeps the air moving through rather than pooling under the roof
  • Nothing in the floor. Lian Li cap graphics card thickness at 61mm if you fit a floor fan, which rules it out on the larger cards. On the smaller ones we would still rather leave the floor mesh and its dust filter completely open underneath the card, so it draws cool air from outside the case rather than air that is already in it
  • No side fans anywhere in this range, which is a deliberate decision rather than an oversight. It means the tempered glass side panel upgrade never conflicts with anything we have fitted
  • Every fan in here is a choice we made. This case ships with none at all, so nothing in this machine is a stock leftover we could not be bothered to change
  • Fan curves are set by hand before dispatch and verified through our standard stress testing rather than assumed
• ⚡ Power supply: Corsair RM850e 850W 80+ Gold, fully modular
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 850W against a build that draws around 540W under a heavy gaming load. That is the right margin rather than a generous one, and it is chosen deliberately: a power supply running at roughly two thirds of its rating is sitting in its most efficient and quietest band, and it leaves proper headroom for the transient spikes a card like this produces
  • Fully modular, so only the cables this build actually uses are fitted. In a 26 litre case that is worth considerably more than it would be in a full tower
  • ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 certified with a native 12V-2x6 cable, so a current or future NVIDIA card connects directly without an adapter in the chain
  • 80 PLUS Gold, a 120mm rifle bearing fan with a zero-RPM mode at low load, and a seven year warranty from Corsair, which is longer than our own and unusual at this price
  • 140mm deep. That matters here: in this chassis the power supply sits at the front and its depth trades directly against how long a graphics card can be. At 140mm the RM850e leaves plenty of room, and we have built and tested this case with cards up to and including an RTX 5080
  • Fitted fan inwards, and that is an aesthetic decision we will own. Mounted the other way round the fan draws from outside the case, which is marginally better on paper. It also turns the power supply's ratings label, that wall of small print and certification logos, towards the side panel you actually look at. Turned inwards you see the plain face instead. In 26 litres with this much air moving through it the thermal difference is not measurable, and the visual difference is there every single day
• 🔌 Cabling: Black cabling, routed and tied
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • The power supply is fully modular, so only the cables this build actually uses are fitted. In a case this size that is worth more than it sounds
  • Cable management is the honest weak point of this chassis and we will not gloss over it. There is very little room behind the motherboard tray and few tie-down points. Getting it tidy is hand work rather than something the case does for you, and it is a real part of why a Viking takes the time it does to build
  • Braided cable extensions are available if you want the look through a glass side panel. Purely cosmetic, and we will say so
• 📶 WiFi / Bluetooth / Ethernet: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and 2.5G Ethernet, included
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Built into the ASRock B850M Riptide WiFi. No separate adapter needed, and the aerial is supplied in the box
  • Wi-Fi 7 rather than the Wi-Fi 6E on the rest of this range. Lower latency and higher throughput if you have a Wi-Fi 7 router, and it falls back gracefully if you do not
  • 2.5 Gigabit wired Ethernet, which we would still recommend over wireless for competitive play regardless of how good the wireless is
• 🪟 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
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  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, memory profile 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. The same test our four thousand pound machines get

  PC36 Premier Optimisation, available in the listing options

  • CPU tuning to bring thermals and noise down with minimal performance loss, plus a deeper strip and debloat of Windows and a hand-tuned fan profile
  • Worth taking on this build. Curve Optimiser undervolting drops both temperature and fan speed on an X3D chip without costing performance, and in 26 litres with a card this size in it, thermal headroom is the thing worth buying

  PC36 Ultimate Performance Tune, available in the listing options

  • Advanced overclocking: memory tune, CPU tune and GPU overclock on top of everything in Premier
  • This is the one machine in the range where the full tune is genuinely available. The 9800X3D is fully multiplier unlocked, unlike the 7800X3D, because the cache sits underneath the cores rather than above them. So this covers a real CPU overclock, a memory tune and a graphics card overclock, rather than undervolting described as overclocking
• 🛡️ Warranty: 3 years parts & labour (return to base)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Standard 3-year coverage included, parts and labour both. The same warranty as every machine we sell, regardless of price
  • Optional extended warranties in the listing options below
  • Every system is hand-built and stress tested before it ships, which is why we are comfortable offering this as standard

👁️ 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)

  On builds with a card at this value we send the graphics card as its own insured parcel rather than leaving it seated in the motherboard through the courier network. Cards this heavy can work loose or damage a slot in transit. It arrives boxed with instructions, and fitting it is one screw and one cable. If you would rather it arrived fitted, tell us on live chat and we will discuss it, but this is what we recommend and it is what we do by default.

• An RTX 5080 does fit this 26 litre case, and we have built and tested it to be certain (click or tap to read more)

  In this chassis the power supply sits at the front, so its depth comes directly out of the space available for a graphics card. We use a 140mm power supply specifically to keep that clearance, and we have built and tested this exact configuration with RTX 5080 cards. It is not marginal. We are noting it because a 26 litre case and an RTX 5080 is a combination worth being sure about.

• Entirely air cooled even at this price, which is a deliberate choice rather than a saving (click or tap to read more)

  There is no AIO in this machine and that is deliberate rather than a saving. The whole Viking range is air cooled and unlit. If you want liquid cooling at this performance level we build plenty of it, just not in this case. Ask on live chat and we will point you at the right series.

• Airflow in this machine runs back to front by design, because the wood front has no fan mounts behind it (click or tap to read more)

  The walnut front has no fan mounts behind it, so the rear panel is the intake and the top-front fan is the exhaust, with the cooler's fans reversed to match. It is explained in full in the cooling section above. We mention it here because if you open this machine up expecting a conventional front-to-back build, it will look wrong until you know why it is that way.

• Cable management is this case's weak point, so a tidy build in here is hand work rather than something the case does for you (click or tap to read more)

  There is very little space behind the motherboard tray and not many tie-down points, so a tidy build in here is hand work rather than something the case does for you. Yours will be done properly. We are noting it because if you ever open it up to add a drive or a stick of memory, there is less slack to play with than in a full tower.

• 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. Images may show a glass side panel which is an optional quick-add upgrade

🛠️ Popular upgrade options

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

  The upgrade we would recommend first on this machine. A system at this level tends to attract the largest games, and several now run past 100GB each. Two of the board's three M.2 slots are free so it can wait, but at this price we would just take it.

• Memory upgrade to 64GB (4×16GB): available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  Worth it if you work in video, run virtual machines, or genuinely fill 32GB. For gaming alone it changes nothing, even here, and we would say so rather than let a flagship price talk you into it. Two slots are free, so this is an add rather than a replace.

• CPU upgrade to a Ryzen 7 9850X3D: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  The faster version of the same idea. Whether the difference is worth the money depends heavily on what you play and at what resolution, and at 4K with this card the answer is usually no. Message us on live chat, tell us what you play, and we will give you a straight answer rather than a percentage.

• Graphics card upgrade to an RTX 5090: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  Worth talking about rather than simply adding to a basket. A 5090 is a large card and a much larger power draw, and in 26 litres both of those matter. We would want to go through clearance and cooling with you properly before building it. Message us and we will be honest about whether it is the right machine for it.

• Enthusiast motherboard upgrade to X870: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  More USB, USB4 and heavier power delivery again. Worth being straight: the Riptide already has the best power delivery, the best audio and the best networking in this range, so there is less to gain here than there is further down. For people who specifically want USB4.

• Tempered glass side panel: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  Lian Li's own glass panel in place of the left mesh one. We leave the side fan mount empty across the whole Viking range specifically so this is a straight swap. Worth being honest here more than anywhere else in the range: mesh is the better panel for airflow, and this is the hottest build in the series. It is still comfortable with glass fitted, and we would tell you if it were not, but if you want the absolute best temperatures the panel it ships with is the one to keep.

• White colourway with a lighter wood front: available via live chat, at no extra cost.
• Extended warranty: available in the listing options below.
• Anything else: speak with us via live chat. You'll be talking to one of us, not a chatbot.

🎯 What is this PC best for?

• 4K gaming at high settings, which is what this pairing is actually built for
• 1440p at very high refresh rates, where the 9800X3D rather than the card sets the ceiling
• Heavy ray tracing left switched on rather than benchmarked once
• Competitive shooters, simulation games and large open worlds, where the cache does its best work
• Streaming and recording at high bitrates using the AV1 encoder
• Anyone who wants this much machine and does not want it to announce itself

📊 Performance estimates

Figures are given at 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).

💬 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.