Viking Three | RTX 5070 12GB + Ryzen 7 7700 | Ready-to-Go Gaming PC | PC36

🪓 Viking Three

Same walnut, rather more ambition

Nothing on the outside of Viking Three tells you it is a step up. Same black walnut across the front, same plain fans, same absence of anything lit. This is the tier where the range stops being an entry machine and the case carries on saying nothing about it.

Behind the wood: eight cores of Ryzen 7, an RTX 5070, 32GB of memory in a matched pair, and a dual-tower cooler large enough that both its fans can turn slowly. This is also the NVIDIA machine in the range, which is the reason to take it over the Radeon tiers either side if ray tracing and DLSS are things you actually use rather than switch on once.

It is the first Viking with genuine headroom in it rather than careful trade-offs, and it still sits on a desk looking like a small wooden box.

🧬 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, and PCIe 5.0 to the graphics card. The case takes cards far larger than this one and coolers up to 165mm. Between the platform and the chassis, almost nothing about this machine is a dead end.

📃 Specifications

• 🧠 CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 8 cores, 16 threads of Zen 4, boosting to 5.3GHz, with 32MB of L3 cache
  • Eight cores is the real step up from the tier below. Games are increasingly happy to use more than six, and the difference shows most in the places you would expect: large open worlds, simulation titles, and playing while streaming or recording at the same time
  • 65W TDP, and in practice it boosts past that to around 88W with every core loaded. Under a 155mm dual-tower cooler that is a light load rather than a challenge, which is exactly why both fans can afford to turn slowly. AMD sell a 7700X that runs the same silicon harder and hotter for a few percent; in this case, in this series, the 7700 is the right one
  • Includes integrated graphics, unlike the 7500F in the tier below. You will almost certainly never use it, but it means the machine will still display a picture if a graphics card ever fails, which makes diagnosing a problem far easier
  • Being straight about where this sits against the X3D chips. A Ryzen 7 7800X3D is faster in games than this, sometimes considerably, because of its much larger cache. It is also a good deal more expensive. Viking Four is that machine. This one buys you eight cores and an NVIDIA card for less
  • Socket AM5, so a faster processor can go in later without touching anything else
• ❄️ 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 Pro-A WiFi (micro-ATX)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • PCIe 5.0 x16 for the graphics card, steel reinforced and with gold-plated contacts. Gen5 x16 is optional on B850 and plenty of boards at this price are Gen4 only, so it is worth naming
  • 8+2+1 Dr.MOS power design. Plain English translation: comfortably more power delivery than anything this board will be asked to run. ASRock do not publish an amperage figure and we are not going to invent one
  • Three M.2 slots, one Gen5 x4 with a heatsink and two Gen4 x4. Only one is used here. Worth knowing: filling the third one disables the secondary PCIe x4 slot, which is a normal lane-sharing arrangement and only matters if you were planning to use both
  • Four DDR5 slots supporting up to 256GB, two of them free on this build
  • Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 built in, aerial supplied. 2.5 Gigabit Realtek Dragon Ethernet
  • Realtek ALC897 audio, four SATA ports, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 on the rear
  • Rear I/O includes a 10Gbps USB-C and a 10Gbps USB-A alongside four more USB ports
  • 8-pin plus 4-pin CPU power, BIOS Flashback, and diagnostic LEDs
  • Only one revision of this board exists. That is worth saying because ASRock's B850M-X line does have an R2.0 revision trap. The Pro-A does not, so there is nothing to check for here
  • 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. It is the point where the memory controller and the memory are in step with each other, and pushing past it usually costs more than it returns
  • 32GB rather than 16, and two sticks rather than one. From this tier upward we stop making that compromise. At this price the machine should not need a caveat about memory bandwidth attached to it
  • 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
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Rated at 5,000MB/s or better, fitted in the board's Gen5 slot under its heatsink. Games load in seconds and Windows feels instant
  • This is a QLC drive. It is 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 operation. Our builds above this tier move to TLC, and we will happily fit one here instead if you would rather
  • 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
  • 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 5070 12GB
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Blackwell architecture with 12GB of GDDR7. A comfortable 1440p card at high settings in current titles
  • DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, which is the real argument for NVIDIA at this tier. It is the difference between ray tracing being a screenshot feature and something you leave switched on
  • Ray tracing hardware that is genuinely ahead of the Radeon cards either side of this tier in the range. If that is what you are buying for, this is the Viking to buy
  • Being straight about the 12GB. It is enough today at 1440p and it is less than the 16GB on the Radeon cards in this range. Where that shows is heavy texture packs and heavily modded games rather than in ordinary play. It is a real trade and it goes the other way from the ray tracing one
  • Ninth-generation NVENC with AV1, which is the best encoder available for streaming and recording
  • The chipset and VRAM are guaranteed: it will always be an RTX 5070 with 12GB. 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: Corsair RM850e 850W 80+ Gold, fully modular
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 850W against a build that draws around 430W under a heavy gaming load. A wide margin on purpose, and it means the graphics card can be replaced with something much larger later without the power supply becoming part of the job
  • 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
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  • 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 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 and 2.5G Ethernet, included
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Built into the ASRock B850M Pro-A WiFi. No separate adapter needed, and the aerial is supplied in the box
  • Wi-Fi 6E adds the 6GHz band, which is far less congested than 2.4 and 5GHz in a busy household
  • 2.5 Gigabit wired Ethernet, which we would still recommend over wireless for competitive play
• 🪟 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 most expensive 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. A 65W eight-core chip already runs cool, and an undervolt lets the cooler's fan sit even lower in its curve. In 26 litres that is the difference between quiet and genuinely inaudible at idle

  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 7700 is unlocked, the memory has headroom above 6000, and the card responds well to a tune. This is the first tier in the range where an overclock returns something you would actually feel, because the cooler has the capacity to absorb 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

• 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.

• 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

• 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.
• 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, because two of this board's three M.2 slots are free.

• SSD upgrade from QLC to TLC: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  Worth it if you regularly move very large files around, or record a lot of video. Not worth it for gaming alone, where the two are indistinguishable. We mention it because the tiers above this one use TLC as standard and we would rather you knew the difference than assumed there was not one.

• 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 it does nothing at all, and we would talk you out of it. Two slots are free, so this is an add rather than a replace.

• CPU upgrade to a Ryzen 7 7800X3D or 9800X3D: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  This board has the power delivery for either, and the cooler is already up to the job. Worth it if you play simulation games, large open worlds or competitive shooters at very high refresh rates, where the processor sets the frame rate. If this is what you want from the start, Viking Four and Viking Five are those machines built around the right chip rather than upgraded into.

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

  The 850W supply has a great deal in hand and this case takes far larger cards. Worth it if you are driving a high refresh 1440p monitor or thinking about 4K. Tell us which monitor you have and we will give you an honest answer about whether it is worth the money.

• Enthusiast motherboard upgrade to X870: choose it from the quick-add upgrades, or speak with us via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  More USB, more M.2, USB4, better audio and heavier power delivery. Being honest: none of it changes your frame rate. This is for people who want the connectivity and know why.

• Tempered glass side panel: choose it from the quick-add upgrades, or speak with us 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. Mesh is the better panel for airflow, and this build has enough thermal margin 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?

• 1440p gaming at high settings with ray tracing switched on and left on
• 1080p gaming at very high refresh rates in competitive titles
• Playing and streaming at the same time, where the eight cores and the AV1 encoder both earn their place
• Large open worlds and simulation games, which are the ones that use more than six cores
• A machine that has to live in a room rather than a den, and look like it belongs there
• Anyone choosing NVIDIA deliberately rather than by default

📊 Performance estimates

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

Fortnite - Competitive Settings (click or tap to expand)

1440p: 260-325 FPS
Native testing (no upscaling or frame generation).

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

1440p: 88-112 FPS
Upscaling set to Auto (DLSS / FSR / XeSS based on GPU).

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

1440p: 115-145 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.