Viking Two | Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB + Ryzen 5 7500F | Ready-to-Go Gaming PC | PC36

🪓 Viking Two

A quiet wooden box that keeps pace with far louder machines

Viking Two is the one we point most people at. Same walnut front, same plain black fans, same absence of anything that glows, and behind them the parts that decide whether a machine still feels quick in three years rather than the ones that look good on a spec sheet today.

The graphics card is where that starts. A Radeon RX 9060 XT with 16GB, not the 8GB version of the same card that usually turns up at this price. Video memory is the thing most likely to age a card badly, and doubling it costs far less than replacing the card early. Around it sits a Ryzen 5 7500F on AM5 and a single-tower air cooler picked for how little of it you can hear.

It is a proper 1440p machine on a platform with years left in it, and it is quiet enough that you will forget it is running.

🧬 Built to last, designed to evolve

Built on AMD's AM5 platform, which AMD have committed to supporting into 2027 and beyond. The processor, memory and storage can all be upgraded without replacing the motherboard, and this board has a second M.2 slot and a second memory slot free. The case takes graphics cards far larger than this one and coolers up to 165mm, so there is a great deal of room for whatever you decide to do next.

📃 Specifications

• 🧠 CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7500F
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 6 cores, 12 threads of Zen 4, boosting to 5.0GHz, with 32MB of L3 cache
  • The 7500F is the 7600 with the integrated graphics switched off and a lower price attached. In a machine with a dedicated graphics card that costs you nothing at all, and it is the best value processor on AM5 because of it
  • 65W TDP, though like every modern Ryzen it boosts past that and will pull around 88W with every core loaded. That is a modest heat load, and the tower cooler fitted absorbs it without the fan ever becoming something you notice
  • Socket AM5, so a much faster processor can go in later without touching anything else
  • No integrated graphics, which is what makes it cheap. Not a limitation in a build with a dedicated card, but worth knowing
• ❄️ CPU cooler: Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE, black
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • A 148mm single-tower air cooler with 4 × 6mm direct-touch nickel-plated copper heatpipes, 51 aluminium fins, and a TL-C12C 120mm PWM fan running to 1550rpm and 66.17 CFM
  • We fit the plain black version rather than the ARGB one, and it costs exactly the same. The lit version is the one most builders reach for. In a case with a wood front and no other lighting in it, a glowing cooler would be the only thing in the machine asking for attention, so we take the black one
  • Rated to 225W against a processor that peaks near 88W, which is the point. It is not merely adequate here, it is comfortable, so the fan sits a long way below its 25.6 dBA rating for almost everything you will do
  • It does not overhang the memory slots, so adding a second stick later is not a job that starts with taking the cooler off
  • Its fan is fitted reversed, pulling from the rear intake and moving air forward across the board. The cooler itself is mounted normally. There is more on why in the case cooling notes below
  • Mounted by hand with Thermalright's own TF4 paste rather than a pre-applied pad, and it carries a 3 year warranty of its own
• 🔲 Motherboard: ASRock B850M-X WiFi R2.0 (micro-ATX)
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • PCIe 5.0 x16 for the graphics card, in a steel-reinforced slot. The R2.0 revision matters here: the original B850M-X runs its graphics slot at Gen4 and has a plain plastic slot. We specify the R2.0 and check the box, because the two are near-identical on a supplier line
  • 6+1+1 Dr.MOS power design. Plain English translation: comfortably more than a 65W processor asks for. ASRock do not publish an amperage figure for these power stages and we are not going to invent one
  • Two M.2 slots, one Gen5 with a heatsink and one Gen4. Only one is used here, so a second SSD is a straightforward job
  • Two DDR5 slots, one used. That leaves the obvious upgrade open, and there is more about what it means in the memory notes below
  • Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 built in, aerial supplied. 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Realtek ALC897 audio, four SATA ports, HDMI and DisplayPort on the rear
  • BIOS Flashback and four diagnostic LEDs, plus three addressable lighting headers if you ever want to add lighting we deliberately have not
  • An economical board and the right one for this build. It gives this machine everything it actually uses, and the money goes into a 16GB graphics card instead
  • PC36 only uses motherboards chosen for stability and longevity. See our Trusted brands page
• 📏 Memory / RAM: 16GB (1×16GB) DDR5-5600 CL36
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • A single 16GB stick of DDR5-5600 CL36, enabled via EXPO before it ships, leaving the board's second slot empty and ready
  • One stick rather than two, and we will explain the reasoning properly rather than gloss over it. DDR5 pricing is unusually high at the moment. A second stick adds a meaningful amount to a machine at this price, and fitting one is how we keep the 16GB graphics card in the build without the total climbing
  • The honest numbers. A single DDR5 stick is not penalised the way a single DDR4 stick was, because each DDR5 module runs two independent sub-channels internally rather than one. The gap against a matched pair is real but small: roughly 4 to 9 percent in genuinely processor-intensive games, and close to nothing everywhere else. In the games this build is bought for, the graphics card is the limit long before the memory is
  • If you would rather have dual channel from day one, ask us on live chat and we will fit 2×8GB for a small supplement. We would not usually recommend it, and on this board in particular: there are only two memory slots, so a pair of 8GB sticks fills them both, and getting to 32GB later means throwing both away. The single 16GB stick leaves a slot free, so adding a matching stick gives you 32GB in dual channel for the price of one
  • 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 down only during very long sustained writes such as moving hundreds of gigabytes in one go. For gaming and normal use you would not notice, and the money saved is in the graphics card instead
  • 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: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • RDNA 4 with 16GB of GDDR6. Strong 1440p at high settings in modern titles, and very high frame rates in competitive games
  • 16GB is the reason this card is here, and the reason this machine is specified the way it is. There is an 8GB version of the same card and we do not fit it. Video memory is the thing most likely to age a graphics card badly, and doubling it costs far less than replacing the card in two years
  • Supports FSR 4, AMD's machine-learning upscaler, which needs RDNA 4 hardware and is a real step up from FSR 3
  • AV1 encoding for streaming and recording at a much better quality-to-bitrate ratio than older codecs
  • Modest power draw and a single 8-pin connector, which keeps the whole machine cool and quiet
  • Being straight about ray tracing: Radeon is still behind NVIDIA here, and at this tier heavy ray tracing means leaning on upscaling. Raster performance and the 16GB are where this card earns its place. If ray tracing is what you care about most, Viking Three is the NVIDIA answer in this range, and we are happy to talk it through on live chat
  • The chipset and VRAM are guaranteed: it will always be an RX 9060 XT 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, 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 PL750D 750W 80+ Bronze
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • 750W against a build that draws around 280W under a heavy gaming load. That is a very generous margin, and it is deliberate: it means a considerably larger graphics card can go in later without touching the power supply
  • 80 PLUS Bronze and ATX 3.1 certified, with a native 12V-2x6 cable rated at 450W. This card does not need it, but a future NVIDIA card would drop straight in without an adapter
  • 120mm hydro bearing fan and a five year warranty from Deepcool
  • Non-modular, and worth understanding in a case this size. Every cable it has is attached whether this build uses it or not, and there is not a great deal of room behind the tray in here to stow the spares. That is hand work on our side and it is done properly on every one
  • 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 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 and 2.5G Ethernet, included
  Click or tap for deeper spec info

  • Built into the ASRock B850M-X WiFi R2.0. 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. It is plenty of wireless for anything you will do on this machine
  • 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
  • This build is already quiet, so the gain here is mostly in the Windows work and the fan profile rather than in noise the cooler is making. The undervolt still drops temperatures, which matters more in 26 litres than it does in a full tower

  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 7500F is unlocked and the graphics card responds well to a tune, so there is real headroom. One honest caveat: this build is graphics-limited at 1440p, so most of the gain comes from the card rather than the processor
• 🛡️ 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 build uses single channel RAM, which offers a price saving but a very small performance loss (click or tap to read more)

  The gap against a matched pair is roughly 4 to 9 percent in processor-intensive games and close to nothing elsewhere, because DDR5 modules run two sub-channels internally rather than one. We fit one stick because DDR5 prices are high at the moment and the money is better spent on the graphics card. Adding a matching 16GB stick later gives you 32GB in dual channel, and that is the end of that road because there is no third slot. If you would rather have 2×8GB in dual channel from the start we will fit it on request, though we would not usually recommend it. Worth deciding at the point of order rather than afterwards.

• 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

• 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.
• Second memory stick for 32GB (2×16GB) dual channel: available via live chat.
  Click or tap for more info

  The cleanest upgrade on this build. It moves you to dual channel and doubles the capacity in one go, and because the fitted stick stays in place nothing gets thrown away. Worth it if you multitask heavily, stream while playing, or run simulation games and heavily modded titles, which are the ones that feel memory bandwidth. Less urgent if you mostly play at 1440p with settings turned up, because the graphics card is the limit there.

• 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.

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

  AM5 means the processor can be changed later without replacing anything else, and this board has the power delivery for a Ryzen 7 7800X3D. 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. Not worth it if you play at 1440p with settings up, because the card is the limit there. If this is what you want from the start, Viking Four is that machine built properly 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 750W supply and this case's clearance are both deliberately generous, so a considerably faster card will go in without any other change. Worth it if you are driving a high refresh 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.

• 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. Worth being honest: none of it changes your frame rate. This is an upgrade for people who want the connectivity and know why they want it, not one we would push at anyone else.

• 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 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?

• 1440p gaming at high settings, which is what this pairing is built around
• 1080p gaming at very high refresh rates in competitive titles
• Games with large texture packs and heavily modded games, where the 16GB does real work
• Streaming and recording, using the card's AV1 encoder
• A machine that has to live in a room rather than a den, and look like it belongs there
• Buyers who would rather have the money in the graphics card than spread across parts they will never notice

📊 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: 220-280 FPS
Native testing (no upscaling or frame generation).

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

1440p: 60-75 FPS
Upscaling set to Auto (DLSS / FSR / XeSS based on GPU).

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

1440p: 100-130 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.