PC build ideas around $7500

Greetings to all—a friend of mine is looking to pull the trigger on a new gaming rig with a budget of roughly $2500, though he’s willing to cough up an extra couple hundred bucks if it actually means something in terms of performance. I’m looking for some guidance here: can anyone put together a solid configuration that justifies that kind of investment? Furthermore, he's wrestling with the age-old dilemma—for this price point, is it wiser to go with Intel or AMD? He also asked whether it would be more efficient to opt for a single 8GB DDR4 stick or if 16GB of DDR3 might somehow serve him better. Or perhaps there's a third path entirely that we haven't considered? Thanks in advance.😁

NVIDIA GeForce RTX series video card 8GB/512bit, PCI-E 3.0 x16, DP, HDMI, Dual HDMI) Retail
SEAGATE Barracuda 7200 1TB (3.5", 64MB, SATA III-600)
Intel Core i5 4460 Crucial processor
Crucial 8GB Module, 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800, CL = 11, Unbuffered, NON-ECC
Corsair Midi Tower black, no PSU included, P/N: ZAL-Z1 NEO
SanDisk X300 256GB SSD, 2.5” 7mm, SATA 6 Gbit/s, Read/Write: 520 MB/s / 470 MB/s, Random Read/Write
Gigabyte GA-B85-HD3-A motherboard
Seasonic SS-550G 550W Power Supply

Total Price: $2504 Best Buy

Question: don't you think an i5 might end up being weaker than an i7 in the long run? I realize the price tag is higher—that's understood—but I'm just wondering. Wouldn't it be a smarter move to just grab an AMD processor instead?

It’s a bit weaker, but honestly, you don't really need to jump up to an i7 for a gaming build. It won't fit your budget anyway since it's more than $333 pricier than an i5. If I were you, I might look into a Skylake setup; with a few tweaks—maybe a cheaper power supply or a smaller 120 GB SSD—it could actually stay within your price range. That’s about as close as you can get. You just can't squeeze any more gaming performance out of this amount of money. And skip the AMD option; there's no point at this budget level.

crimsonstag84 said:NVIDIA GeForce GTX series 8GB/512bit, PCI-E 3.0 x16, DP, HDMI, Dual HDMI) Retail
Western Digital Blue 1TB (3.5", 64MB, SATA III-600)
Intel Core i5 AMD Ryzen processor
Crucial Module 8GB, 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800, CL = 16, Buffered, NON-ECC
Corsair mid-tower case black without PSU P/N: ZAL-Z1 NEO
SanDisk X300 256GB SSD, 2.5” 7mm, SATA 6 Gbit/s, Read/Write: 520 MB/s / 470 MB/s, Random Read/Write
Gigabyte GA-B85-HD3-A
EVGA power supply, 550W

Total: $2504 Centro

I'm leaning toward this one👍

The only thing is you could maybe swap in an RTX 3060 for the GPU, but this is 👍