First ever Gaming PC build help

[tranadasteve]

Budget (including currency): $2000 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mainly for MSFS & X-Plane but also want to play games like RDR2, No Man's Sky, and similar.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

I have never owned a PC before; I was born and raised strictly on Mac so parts and the like are absolutely foreign to me. I have a keyboard and mouse and a 4K 60hz monitor. Please recommend me the best items for my budget and use case. Thank you! 

 

[Hinjima]

29 minutes ago, tranadasteve said:

Budget (including currency): $2000 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mainly for MSFS & X-Plane but also want to play games like RDR2, No Man's Sky, and similar.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

I have never owned a PC before; I was born and raised strictly on Mac so parts and the like are absolutely foreign to me. I have a keyboard and mouse and a 4K 60hz monitor. Please recommend me the best items for my budget and use case. Thank you! 

 

Welcome to the forum and welcome to the world of PC gaming! Is fantastic!  You will probably get quite a few different builds ( this is good, more choice is great! )  However, it can all be a bit overwhelming so I hope the fine people giving you a a list of parts can explain why they did so and maybe explain the benefits and negatives of said builds. I will leave the parts picking to the people that enjoy doing so
Hinjima.
Edit, I couldnt help myself.  This is my pick and how I would go about it.  I own a very similar platform, I am not biased, its just how I went about it from a cost to performance perspective with upgradeability in mind.
7700x is one of the fastest gaming CPU's out there, AM5 being a very new platform with future CPU's releasing on this platform for upgradeability down the line.
Peerless Assassin SE120 is the best 'budget' cooler, 7700x is easily cooled with this CPU cooler.
Good Gigabyte B650 motherboard.  Price to Performance is nice.
Good RAM, decent speed and latency, could go faster but over budget.
2TB M.2 SSD, fast and reliable.
Red Devil 7900 XTX, Fastest GPU out there after the RTX 4090.  Cant really go much better than this.
Corsair 4000D, very good case with good airflow
RM850e, 850w power supply, Good quality and reliability and enough power for the PC components.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Wzw4tn

I could have gone 7700 non X that comes with stock cooler but the Peerless Assassin will definitely help keep noise levels down and managed to squeeze in the X, because why not.

[Hinjima]

18 minutes ago, tranadasteve said:

Budget (including currency): $2000 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mainly for MSFS & X-Plane but also want to play games like RDR2, No Man's Sky, and similar.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

I have never owned a PC before; I was born and raised strictly on Mac so parts and the like are absolutely foreign to me. I have a keyboard and mouse and a 4K 60hz monitor. Please recommend me the best items for my budget and use case. Thank you! 

 

Edited my post, I couldnt help myself making a list

[tranadasteve]

8 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

Edited my post, I couldnt help myself making a list

What a legend, thank you! 

[Jack Dvorak]

I like hinjima's list, and to add to it, you can save money if you have a nearby microcenter. They have these bundles going on right now, very good deals.

[Hinjima]

2 minutes ago, Jack Dvorak said:

I like hinjima's list, and to add to it, you can save money if you have a nearby microcenter. They have these bundles going on right now, very good deals.

Oh yeah, totally forgot about the Microcenter deals! I live in Norway so I can't remember everything from other countries stores   Microcenter has killer deals for the AM5 platforms.

[SorryBella]

Just quick compression on Hinjima's build. To me close, but we can do a very bit better.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($319.00 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler  ($35.90 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard  ($179.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Crucial P5 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($97.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: XFX Speedster MERC 310 Black Edition Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24 GB Video Card  ($959.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($89.90 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Corsair RM850e (2023) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.00 @ Amazon) 
Total: $1901.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-07-25 22:53 EDT-0400

 

And with said compression we can get a 7800X3D which does scale on MSFS.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/3hyH99/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-42-ghz-8-core-processor-100-100000910wof