I'll add some more basics.. Specs and parts/build to look for
16 GB of DDR4 ram
4-8 core chip. I personally think the intel qaud cores are more than good enough. a 10400-10700. Though a 9400 or 10700, or even an 8700 on the lower end.
600-700w power supply. Often people go overboard on this, you really don't need a huge one unless your overclocking or running a crap ton of drives
vid card, this one is harder with stocking issues, But a 1060 6GB, 1080, 2060, 2070, 2080, 3060, and 3060 TI 3070, 3080 are all very good cards.. the order i typed them is the order of worst to best, and i use worst loosely, a 1060 6GB is a very solid card, paired with a 9 or 10 series chip it will run basically anything, though you might need to run at 1440 or 1080p for things down the road which honestly isn't that big of a deal even on 4k big screen tvs it looks pretty good.
Storage, You really want a 1T SSD for your main drive, But often systems come with a 500GB, If you can upgrade that to 1TB do it. I highly discourage going smaller than that. to me 1TB is the sweet spot right now for price and use.
HDD, I prefer going with an HDD as a secondary drive over a second SSD. Mainly for cost, but also for storage space. You can grab a 4-8 TB drive for around 100 at this point in time. I use it for most of my games and for backup and larger files. I always put a game on my HDD first. I load it up and if it loads pretty quick and runs fine off this drive i leave it. If i find it takes forever to load, or has lots of load screens in the game that take more than a second or two i swap it over to the SSD. The main reason is for space, but also it is a secondary drive at this point. So if i need to format and refresh the main drive, aka the SSD, all my stuff just stays nicely on this drive and is not effected by reinstalling the system. (sometimes it is a good thing to refresh a system)
One last thing about storage, If you have the option to just get a 1TB SSD do it. Getting a large HDD after the fact is super easy to install on a desktop. a screw driver and plug in a couple of wires. 10 mins on youtube will make it very simple for anyone to do these days. it's all just plug and play.
Parts. I realize some people have preferences, but here are some brands and i have used for 20+ years and not had issues with them, Sure a failed drive here and there, or a bad stick of ram but it happens on occasion. Over all these are solid parts. (i build lots of comps for me and other folks so your bound to have a bad part from time to time, typically it is bad on install verse going bad.) But these companies i have always had good experiences with CS when something has gone wrong which is important so a replacement is easy when if it does happen.
Storage, HDD Western digital (black series), Seagate Barricuda.
SSD, Samsung, Wester digital (black series)
For vid cards and mother boards, (typically the maker of the computer) MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte are all good companies
Power supplies, Corsair and EVGA
Ram Corsair
If you see these brands in the pre-builts you are looking at, they can be good systems. But if you find something you are consitering it doesn't hurt to make a post and get some thoughts on it.
One last thing a company like newegg will actually build your custom system for you. You pick out all the parts and they assemble and test it for you and send it off for a small fee. I think its about 100 dollars as of last i checked. When vid cards are back in stock this could be the way to go. in the mean time finding a pre-built is going to be a bit harder, though end of jan or feb they should be getting things back in stock.
So basically, say a
10700
3060 TI
16 GB ram
1TB SSD
4TB HDD
750w PS
That might price up to around 1700 and be a very solid system.. Skim down a little on things and you are talking a little over 1k and still a extremely powerful gamer that will last you at least 5 years.