she's tired of seeing me go through game withdrawals
Nah, she's just tired of seeing you full stop.
I would strongly urge you to start from scratch with your hard drive and use Windows 11. Windows 10 goes end of life in October, so no more security updates and you would be asking to get hacked. Also if it really is a hard drive, rather than an SSD, they are SO SLOW. It's a bit painful starting from scratch but it will be so more reliable if you aren't carrying the baggage from loads of old software installations.
Ignore Awol. He spends so much time building his PCs, he never plays. Building you own is fine if you know what you are doing but I would never recommend it to someone who's not experienced doing it. If you do still want to go that route, my son uses a website that helps you get the best balance of components for a particular budget, I will get the details and post it when I have it. It might also be useful for checking the spec of any pre-built PCs you are looking at.
Ignore Boots too. The man has so much money he has a bar in his shed. Doesn't know what it's like for the rest of us.
Start with a budget and when you have had a look around you could post some links to anything that you like the look of to see if people have any comments.