@luke
Gooootcha, gotcha. So, the method that worked for me was identifying the games I want to run at x FPS with y resolution. Looked at the hardware requirements for those games (lower and upper bounds). Use https://www.cpubenchmark.net and related sites to see what benchmark numbers those hardware components come in at. Then I started swapping out components in a default build and see if they hit within my benchmark bounds.
PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks

PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!

@luke The only *gotcha* I can think of is, if you're going with an AMD CPU *and* you want to upgrade individual components in the future, ensure your motherboard is an AM5 chipset.

Feel free to hit me up on here or Discord if you get stuck! (Discord = quicker responses)