Warning: Apologies for the rather long response incoming.
My signature is old I no longer have that PC. My son currently has no PC at all. So I am starting from scratch other than maybe a PSU I might have kicking around.
On the 2600k comment. Do you think with an upgraded GPU and more Ram that CPU would handle capturing Minecraft footage to make you tube videos? That is my sons intended goal.
Absolutely. I was playing and capturing video in minecraft back in the days when I was running a QX9650, 8GB of memory and an HD5970 graphics card. And the 2600k is a considerably faster chip and has double the threads compared to the QX9650 I was using back then. (for the record, I'm still using a 2600k on my PC right now). As others have pointed, I just used FRAPS to capture the footage. The thing is, minecraft is not a demanding game in the slightest. And when it is putting a load on the system, it's on the CPU side, not the GPU side. Most games are GPU intensive. Minecraft is one those rarer examples of a game that's far more CPU and RAM intensive. You can easily run minecraft on just about any graphics card and be fine. Even with an integrated intel GPU. But in minecraft, simply because of how big and complex the worlds can be, you'll need a decent CPU and plenty of RAM if you want ensure you can keep the details and draw distances as high as possible in the biggest worlds.
Now here's the thing, because there is a distinction. If your son is wanting to simply capture video for encoding later and then uploading to youtube, then he should be fine. But if he's wanting to stream, that can be a little more complex because in steaming your not simply capturing video, but also encoding it at the same time for the stream. Just to be clear, that would be playing, capturing, encoding and streaming all at once. The 2600k should be fine for basic streaming (should be) due to it's 8 threads. Hell, some of my friends occasionally drop in my game streams on my steam games (but I do sometimes notice a FPS drop when they do, "depending on the game"). But since I've never really messed with programs like OBS or other such software, I can't really say how well the 2600k handles live streaming for websites like Twitch. Again, it should be fine for say the faster and fastest settings, but for anything higher, you might want a bit of a beefier CPU like the Ryzen 1600, 1600X or 1700 as they've been proven to be really solid multitaskers for streamers and bang for buck, they're pretty hard to beat right now.
When it comes to gaming in general. For a modern gaming rig, I generally recommend a minimum of 8GB of memory these days with a recommendation that if you can afford to, go for 16GB. For most older games (minecraft included) 8GB is plenty for just about any game. But for todays games and going forward, I think 16GB is going to be the new standard. The reason is because now that the consoles have all finally moved to 64bit and as such nearly all games that are being released now are all requiring 64bit OS's, developers are now finally starting to make use of higher amounts of memory. This allows them to put a lot more things on screen at much higher texture quality and fidelity. But things like higher quality textures require considerably more memory than older games did. Even the new Xbox One X that's just about to be released has 12GB shared memory for this very reason. And you'll notice this in games due to be released on PC like Final Fantasy XV, it's minimum requirements state 8GB of memory with a recommended spec of 16GB of memory. It's for this reason, with games going forward, I recommend that if you can afford to, even on a 1080p gaming rig, try to get 16GB of memory, but you can still get away with 8GB if your budget simply won't allow for it at this time. Plus RAM is one of those things that can always be upgraded/increased later on down the road if need be fairly easily. Just make sure to try to match speed, latencies and voltages and you should be fine in most cases. Otherwise, for piece of mind, just buy another set of the modules you already bought.
Everything I'm about to say, does not figure in exact budgets. It just takes into account a basic budget idea. Exacting details can be worked out later.
Now for build recommendations. Honestly, for a new build, if gaming was your only concern, yes, a Core i5 would easily be plenty good enough. But, because your son is also looking into recording his gaming and even if he "might" not be thinking about it now, he may eventually want to venture into actual streaming, and it that case, I would probably advise against an i5 due to their lack of threads. The Core i7's are downright expensive. Especially when you factor in the cost of the motherboard as part of the overall build. And on your budget you can pretty much forget about the Coffee Lake 8000 series CPU's. Right now with Coffee Lake, you would be forced to buy a very expensive high end Z300 series motherboard even for a low end Coffee Lake CPU, which simply makes very little sense. There will be lower end more budget friendly boards coming out for Coffee Lake, but they won't start showing up on the market until next year at the earliest. For these reason, I really think you should focus your search towards the AMD Ryzen CPUs. Specifically the R5 1600 or better. If you don't plan to do any overclocking yourself, then I would opt for the 1600X provided your budget would allow for it. Right now bang for buck, Intel can't touch Ryzen. They are outstanding multitaskers and more than good enough for gaming. Seriously, don't listen to the Intel fanboys who would have you believe otherwise. The only application where the Ryzen chips are not a good choice is if your wanting to game at ultra high framerates on monitors with obscenely high refresh rates. Ryzen is perfect for gaming at 60hz higher. Even well over 120hz. It's only when refresh rates go beyond 144hz and 200hz+ that Ryzen has trouble keeping up. And that can be narrowed down to the frequency advantage Intel has over AMD. But with something like the 1600X, 4.1Ghz is nothing to sneeze at. Plus the Ryzen processors are extremely efficient, use less power and produce less heat than Intel's offerings. Although it would help Intel on the heat front if they would actually solder their chips instead of using TIM for the IHS causing no end of headaches for people wanting to overclock their chips and even some who aren't even overclocking.
(Just thought I should point this out, since my tone in that last paragraph might paint the wrong picture. I'm not a fanboy for either side. I never hold brand loyalties. Never saw the point. I go for the best product for the money. Always. Right now I may be recommending AMD, but I've always bought Intel over the years. But the upgrade I'm working on right now for myself, I plan to build an AMD Threadripper build. It will be my first AMD build for myself as well. I've built AMD rigs for my friends before, but this will be the first for myself. My point is, the recommendations I give, are the same things I would do for myself as well. I hold no brand loyalties. I just call it how I see it. Just wanted to nip it in the butt before it started in case anyone decided to imply I had some kind of hidden agenda or short-sighted bias. There are people like that, but I'm not one of them.)
For the motherboard, I recommend aiming for the B350 series of motherboards. Very good boards and well priced, allows for higher performance RAM to be installed and operated at their rated speeds, have good components and have good overclocking features for the CPU should you want them. You could go to the lower A series boards, but you will lose any overclocking features for the CPU and you will be restricted to running RAM modules at JDEC speeds. Don't bother with the X370 boards. Not only are they more expensive than the B350 but all you really gain is slightly better overclockability for RAM and CPU (debatable) and Crossfire and SLI support (ie multi GPU support). But functionally that's really it. The nice happy middle ground are the B350 boards and offer the best bang for buck.
For RAM, as mentioned earlier, I recommend an absolute minimum of 8GB, but if your budget allows for it, I highly recommend 16GB for gaming going forward. Also, I should note that Ryzen is known to benefit considerably from higher frequency RAM. The butter zone seems to be 3200Mhz with CL14 timings. But there's wiggle room there and it's not an absolute necessity.
Also don't use a watercooler (aka CLC, aka AIO) for his CPU cooler. Not for his first computer. A traditional heatsink style air cooler is more than good enough provided you buy a decent one and even then, most "good" air coolers will outperform even a 120mm single rad water cooler. It's only when you get to the 240mm dual rads that water coolers actually perform better than good air coolers. And air coolers are considerably cheaper than water coolers, make less noise and have far fewer risks than water coolers. I'm not saying if you get a water cooler something will go wrong. Only that "if" something does go wrong, you "could" end up with far more trouble than it's worth. Don't get me wrong, water coolers are very good. The question is if they are worth it for your use case and if that use case justifies the cost and the risk, however small the probability may be. So for his first build, I highly recommend an air cooler is more than good enough. Better in many situations and cheaper in most cases.
Here's an example of an experience I recently had when a dual rad water cooler in my partners PC failed and sprang a leak. Follow the links to read what happened, then you can decide for yourself. It was big ordeal, which is why it was in two parts:
Part 1:
https://www.gamingtribe.com/status/13194140409934
Part 2:
https://www.gamingtribe.com/status/13194140409933
Once I get a couple hours of free time today or tomorrow, I'll have a look for you and make a preliminary proposed build. Then we can work on the finer details. Do you have Microsoft Excel. I use a template I made several years ago for easily working out PC builds, but I made it using Excel. I don't use any macros in it, but I do use functions from excel that don't tend to play well with other excel programs like open office. Also, a couple other questions. You said he doesn't have a computer. But when you set your $500 mark, I accidentally made the assumption that he already had at least some kind of computer, so I now have to ask. What all do I also need to take account of in the budget. Is this just for the tower or does he/you have any of the following other components that may not need to be accounted for in the build:
Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
Windows 10
Speakers (if you don't want to use speakers built into monitor)
Do these things need to be included in the build budget?
And finally just a thought:
There is one other option you could do since you've said you've built several computers for yourself before. And I know what it's like to have an unexpected expense like car trouble (which you need to make a living and is rarely cheap) get in the way of something you wanted to do for someone special to you. What you could do rather than allow one of life's many curve balls ruin or slash your plan, you could turn it to your advantage. What you could do, is pick out a nice PC case. Just the case or maybe the case and motherboard (that way you can dictate the platform to keep it budget friendly) and have him open that for Christmas. He won't be able to use his computer on Christmas day obviously, but what you can do, is turn it into a father, son project. You can build the computer together. Guiding him and allowing him to be an active part in picking out the parts and actually building it. Turning it into a fun project where you could teach him how build a computer, but it also importantly, allows you more time save up for the build you want, rather than stretching your home budget to breaking point trying to meet a Christmas deadline. And it would allow you to give your son the opportunity to get creative with his new computer as well and make it his own, like picking out led lights or something else customizable, etc. It's just a thought.
Hope this helps.
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