Cousin Has £2000 to spend on new gaming PC, What would you build?

Intel have ‘caught up’ with their most recent (just released) chips, yes, and especially so if you ONLY do gaming - in which case Intel were more or less always at least on par with AMD, albeit usually pricier - but Ryzen remains a great option if there’s any likelihood of moderate-heavy multitasking (eg. streaming). 5800x is a good chip and available on some cracking deals lately - it’s often cheaper than the 5700x, although it does pull more than double the power at peak.

Essentially the current landscape across all major components is one of healthy competition, so the previous years’ seesaw of Ryzen vs Intel CPUs, AMD vs NVIDIA GPUs etc has levelled out somewhat. (AMD GPU drivers can still be a bit iffy, if they sort that out then it’s all to play for.)

Basically if absolutely all else is equal, choose on the basis of which motherboard platforms are likely to be supported longest - in which case I’d suggest AMD have the slightly better track record of offering multi-year support for various CPU architectures on a single generation of socket.

Your spec above works well, although I’ve never truly seen the value proposition of X470/570 vs their respective B-tier boards (450/550). Something like an MSI Tomahawk will be just fine, and cheaper.

Be prepared to spent £120 on a really good quality PSU with ample wattage for your build. Don’t cheap out on this unglamorous but key component - go top tier PSU with that budget.

Save a bit by avoiding super fast latest RAM, anything over about 3200-3600 is really still pretty unnecessary and overpriced. Start with 16gb if the budget won’t stretch to 32 right now, and add more later if you need, although you probably won’t for gaming.

IMO don’t bother with water cooling, go Noctua and air. So much less hassle, less to go wrong. Absolute workhorses, and quiet as any water pump. Get a case with good airflow above all else. I really like building in Fractal cases for their ease of cable management; the newer Torrent line is great if the budget allows, if not the older Meshify series still perform well.

Don’t forget speakers or headphones; inbuilt monitor speakers are never good (and certainly don’t pay more for one with them).

Consider whether a second screen might be wanted later, and if so I’d probably avoid a curved monitor for now, which a lot of ‘gaming’ ones are these days. Just get a nice IPS that will do 100+ Hz, 27” at 1440p is perfect. (edited)

My 5 5600, RX6900XT build cost around £1200. Spend more on the GPU and less on the CPU if it's a gaming rig.

First question is does he insist on blowing the full 2k even if he doesn't need to?

uk.pcpartpicker.com/lis…NpB

That's my pc am bullying it right now wish me luck 🖐🏻