Viking One | RTX 5050 8GB + Ryzen 5 5600 | Ready-to-Go Gaming PC | PC36

🪓 Viking One

A walnut front, plain black fans, and nothing in it that asks for attention

Viking One is the entry point to a range built around one case and one idea: a gaming PC that looks like a piece of furniture rather than a light show. Real black walnut across the front, mesh at the sides, no lighting anywhere and no liquid cooling anywhere. If the machine on your desk is something you would rather not look at, this series exists for you.

This one is built on AM4, deliberately. A Ryzen 5 5600 and an RTX 5050 is not the fastest pairing we sell and we are not going to dress it up as one. What it is: a genuinely quiet, genuinely well-made 1080p machine at the point where DDR5 pricing makes the equivalent AM5 build several hundred pounds more for gains you would not see at this resolution.

Everything below is written out rather than left for you to work out, including the parts of it that are compromises.

🧬 Built to last, designed to evolve

Built on AMD's AM4 platform, which is mature rather than current, and that is the whole argument for it here. DDR4 memory costs a fraction of DDR5 right now, the boards are cheap and well understood, and the Ryzen 5 5600 is a known quantity. The board has four memory slots with two free, a second M.2 slot free, and the case takes graphics cards far larger than this one and coolers up to 165mm. AM4 will not take a next-generation processor, and we would rather say that here than bury it. What this machine has room for is more memory, more storage and a considerably faster graphics card.

📃 Specifications

• 🧠 CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 6 cores, 12 threads of Zen 3, boosting to 4.4GHz, with 32MB of L3 cache
  • 65W TDP. It runs cool, it runs quiet, and it does not need an expensive cooler to keep it in check
  • Being straight about where this sits. The 5600 is several years old and a current AM5 chip is meaningfully faster. At 1080p with this graphics card that gap almost never shows, because the card runs out of headroom long before the processor does. It is the right chip for this build and the wrong chip for a faster one
  • Socket AM4. A Ryzen 7 5700X3D is the natural step up on this platform if you ever want one, and it drops straight in
  • Includes integrated graphics: no. The 5600 has none, which is normal for this chip and irrelevant with a dedicated card
• ❄️ CPU cooler: AMD Wraith Stealth
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • The cooler AMD supply with the 5600, matched to a 65W processor
  • Being straight about it: it holds the 5600 within temperature comfortably, and you will hear it when the processor is working hard. It is not a bad cooler, it is a small one. Fitting it here keeps this machine at its price
  • This is the one place Viking One differs from the rest of the range, which all use tower coolers. If quiet matters to you, the tower cooler upgrade below is the single most effective change you can make to this machine, and this case takes coolers up to 165mm so there is no constraint on how far you go
  • Note that a stock cooler does not have reversible fans in the way the tower coolers further up this range do, so Viking One's airflow story is slightly simpler than its siblings. The rear intake still feeds it directly
  • Mounted with fresh paste applied by hand rather than the pre-applied pad
• 🔲 Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi (micro-ATX)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • PCIe 4.0 x16 for the graphics card. Not steel reinforced on this board, which is why the case's anti-sag bracket earns its place
  • Four DDR4 slots supporting up to 128GB, and only two are used here. That is a genuine advantage over the small-form-factor boards in our other ranges, where two slots is the limit. Doubling the memory later means adding sticks, not replacing them
  • Two M.2 slots, one Gen4 with a heatsink and one Gen3. One is used, so a second SSD is a straightforward job
  • Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2, and we are going to be blunt about this one. MSI's own store page title markets this board as "Wi-Fi 6". The specification table on that same page says Intel Wireless-AC 3168, 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, which is Wi-Fi 5. Several retailers repeat MSI's error. It is Wi-Fi 5, it is fine for gaming, and we would rather you heard it from us than found out later
  • Gigabit Ethernet, not 2.5 Gigabit. More than enough for any internet connection you are likely to have, and we would still recommend the cable over wireless for competitive play
  • Realtek HD audio, four SATA ports, and VGA, DisplayPort and HDMI on the rear
  • Rear I/O is four USB-A at 5Gbps plus two USB 2.0. There is no USB-C on the rear of this board. The case has one on the front, which is where most people plug things in anyway, but if you rely on rear USB-C this is worth knowing before you order
  • BIOS Flashback and EZ Debug LEDs, both of which make this board easy to recover if something goes wrong years from now
  • MSI publish no VRM phase count or amperage figure for this board, so we are not going to invent one. What we can say is that it runs a 65W processor without difficulty, which is what it is here to do
  • PC36 only uses motherboards chosen for stability and longevity. See our Trusted brands page
• 📏 Memory / RAM: 16GB (2×8GB) DDR4-3200 CL16
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • A matched pair running in dual channel, with the XMP profile enabled before it ships
  • DDR4 is the reason this machine costs what it does. DDR5 pricing is unusually high at the moment and the same capacity on AM5 costs several times this. Staying on AM4 for the entry tier is how the graphics card and the case stay where they are
  • 16GB is enough for every current game at these settings. It is the point where more memory stops changing frame rates and starts only helping with what else you have open
  • Two slots free, so 32GB later means adding two sticks rather than throwing anything away
  • Specification guaranteed, model may vary. Happy to confirm the exact part on request
• 💾 Storage: 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Rated at 5,000MB/s or better, fitted in the board's Gen4 slot under its heatsink. Games load in seconds and Windows feels instant
  • This is a QLC drive. Quick for everything you will do day to day, and it slows only during very long sustained writes such as moving hundreds of gigabytes in one go. For gaming you would not notice
  • We fit 1TB as standard right across the Viking range rather than varying it by price, so comparing our machines to each other is straightforward. The 2TB option is below
  • The board's second M.2 slot is 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 5050 8GB
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Blackwell architecture, 2,560 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus at 320GB/s
  • This is a 1080p card and we are going to say so plainly. At 1080p with settings up it is comfortable in everything current. At 1440p it manages, with settings turned down or upscaling turned on. If 1440p is what you are buying for, Viking Two is the honest recommendation rather than this one
  • DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, which is genuinely useful at this tier. It is the difference between playable and comfortable in the heavier titles
  • 130W and a single 8-pin connector, which is a large part of why this machine is as quiet as it is
  • Ninth-generation NVENC encoder with AV1 support, so streaming and recording quality is far better than the raw performance would suggest
  • The chipset and VRAM are guaranteed: it will always be an RTX 5050 with 8GB. 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, 1 × 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
  • Two fans, both 120mm, both plain black and both fitted by us
  • 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: Deepcool PF500 500W
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 500W against a build that draws around 220W under a heavy gaming load. Comfortable margin without paying for capacity this machine will never touch
  • 120mm hydraulic bearing fan, and it is not the thing you will hear in this machine
  • Non-modular, and worth understanding in a case this size. Every cable it has is attached whether this build uses them or not, and there is not much room behind the tray here to hide the spares. Making that tidy is hand work, and it is done properly on every one
  • This is an ATX12V 2.4 unit rather than an ATX 3.1 one, and it has no 12V-2x6 connector. The RTX 5050 does not need one, so it changes nothing today. It does mean that if you later fit a card that wants a native 16-pin cable, the power supply is part of that upgrade. We would rather flag that now than have you discover it in two years
  • 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's own cables, all black, routed and tied down rather than bundled and hidden
  • Two things working against each other here, and we would rather say so. This power supply is non-modular, so every cable it has is attached whether this build uses it or not, and this chassis has very little room behind the motherboard tray. Making that tidy is entirely hand work. It is one of the genuine reasons a machine like this takes the time it does, and it is done properly on every one
  • 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 5, Bluetooth 4.2 and Gigabit Ethernet, included
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Built into the MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi. No separate adapter needed and the aerial is supplied in the box
  • Wi-Fi 5 rather than Wi-Fi 6, despite what MSI's own product title says. Plenty for gaming and streaming, and a step behind the boards further up this range
  • Gigabit wired Ethernet, which we would recommend over wireless for competitive play regardless of which board you are on
• 🪟 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 more on this build than on most, because the stock cooler is the loudest thing in the machine and a proper undervolt is what quietens it down

  PC36 Ultimate Performance Tune, available in the listing options

  • Advanced overclocking: memory tune, CPU tune and GPU overclock on top of everything in Premier
  • The 5600 has real headroom and the card responds to a tune, but two honest caveats. This build is graphics-limited even at 1080p in the heavier titles, so most of the gain comes from the card. And on a stock cooler a processor overclock costs you quiet, which is the thing this series is actually for. We would pair this with the cooler upgrade or skip it
• 🛡️ 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

• This is a 1080p machine that will also run 1440p with settings turned down (click or tap to read more)

  The RTX 5050 is comfortable at 1080p with settings up and workable at 1440p with them down. We have listed both resolutions below so you can see the difference rather than take our word for it. If you already own a 1440p monitor, Viking Two is the machine we would point you at.

• The stock CPU cooler is adequate, but we recommend choosing to upgrade it for noise and thermal improvement (click or tap to read more)

  It holds the 5600 within temperature without difficulty, but you will hear it when the processor is working. Every other Viking has a tower cooler. This one has the upgrade available below, and it is the single change we would recommend first.

• The power supply has no 12V-2x6 cable, which nothing in this build needs but a much larger card later would (click or tap to read more)

  Nothing in this build needs one. It matters only if you later fit a graphics card that expects a native 16-pin connector, at which point the power supply becomes part of that upgrade rather than something you keep.

• 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.

• No lighting and no liquid cooling anywhere in this range, which is the point of the series rather than a saving (click or tap to read more)

  Plain black fans, a black cooler and a wood front, and the only thing you should notice about it in a room is that you do not notice it. If you want RGB or an AIO, we build plenty of both, just not in this case. Ask us on live chat and we will point you at the right series.

• 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

• CPU cooler upgrade to a tower cooler: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  The first upgrade we would suggest on this build, and the one that changes how you feel about the machine rather than how it benchmarks. A proper tower cooler with a 120mm fan instead of a small stock cooler spinning fast. It is the difference between a machine you can hear across a room and one you cannot. Worth it for almost everyone, and especially if this is going on a desk you sit at. This case takes coolers up to 165mm.

• Memory upgrade to 32GB (4×8GB or 2×16GB) dual channel: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  Worth it if you stream, keep a browser full of tabs open alongside a game, or play the heavily modded simulation titles that genuinely eat memory. Easy to defer, because this board has four slots and two of them are free, so adding memory later means adding rather than replacing. For gaming alone at 1080p, 16GB is honestly still enough.

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

  Worth taking if you keep more than a handful of large modern games installed, since several now run past 100GB each. Easy to defer on this build though, because the board's second M.2 slot is free and adding a drive later is a ten minute job.

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

  The case takes cards far larger than the RTX 5050, so the only real constraint is the 500W power supply, and a step up would usually mean changing that too. Worth it if you are driving a 1440p monitor and want to stop turning settings down. Tell us which monitor you have and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth the money, or whether Viking Two is the better answer.

• CPU upgrade to a Ryzen 7 5700X3D: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  The best chip AM4 ever got, and it drops into this board. Worth it if you play simulation games, large open worlds, or competitive shooters at high refresh rates, where the processor sets the frame rate rather than the card. Not worth it if you play at 1080p with settings up, because the graphics card is the limit there. If you take it, take the cooler upgrade with it.

• 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 it if the machine sits where you see that side of it. Worth knowing that mesh is the better panel for airflow, and that this build runs cool enough that it does not matter much either way.

• 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?

• 1080p gaming at high settings, which is what this pairing is built around
• Competitive shooters at high refresh rates, where the 5050 has plenty in hand
• A first proper gaming PC, bought at the point where DDR5 pricing makes the AM5 equivalent hard to justify
• A machine that has to live in a room rather than a den, and look like it belongs there
• Anyone who has been put off by cases that glow
• Streaming and recording, using the card's AV1 encoder

📊 Performance estimates

Figures are given at both 1080p and 1440p, because this is genuinely a 1080p machine and we would rather show you the difference than average it away. Performance varies with game updates, maps, settings and background apps. These are estimates, not guarantees.

Fortnite - Competitive Settings (click or tap to expand)

1080p: 200-260 FPS
1440p: 115-150 FPS
Native testing (no upscaling or frame generation).

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

1080p: 55-70 FPS
1440p: 32-42 FPS
Upscaling set to Auto (DLSS / FSR / XeSS based on GPU).

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

1080p: 85-110 FPS
1440p: 50-65 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.