Technology for an apparatus of a user equipment (UE), operable to perform a random-access procedure using a UE-specific control resource set (CORESET) is disclosed. The UE can decode a 5 message, received from the next generation node B (gNB), to perform a contention free random-access (RA) procedure. The UE can encode a random-access channel (RACH) preamble for transmission to the gNB using one or more UE-specific CORESET. The UE can decode a random-access response (RAR) received from the gNB in response to the RACH preamble transmission using the one or more UE10 specific CORESET.