Something like this:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/C4rDk9
Notes:
< Cooler >
EVGA CLC 360 is an absolute steal at that price. That's why it has surged to #53 on Amazon 24-hour bestseller list in the "
Heatsinks" category (almost none of these are actual coolers). Doubt it lasts long. The caveats with this cooler are, first, that it has an awful installation manual, but fortunately
@MusterX figured this out for you when he got the 280mm, IIRC, you can find those posts; second, it is also incredibly thick, like
Gamers Nexus's current champion of noise-normalized thermals, the Arctic Freezer II, but this isn't an issue with my recommended build because the Corsair 5000D Airflow supports side mounting for the cooler, and this happens to be the best way to install any 360mm AIO for overall air flow strategy; third, it will be too loud at max RPM, which is why it's #2 on GN's all-time absolute cooling performance, but you can adjust this using software. Noise-normalized performance is what matters, and it is excellent. Since your wife does video editing, the 12900K can get incredibly hot drawing on all cores, so this is why I suggest such a powerful cooler.
<Motherboard>
For the motherboard, I think the B660 MSI Tomahawk is more than enough because I doubt you intend to manually overclock the CPU, and it has a killer feature set. The big decision is going DDR4 or DDR5, but DDR5 is still seriously overpriced, and in fact, even has drawbacks currently
such as severe 1% low framerate drops due to the high timings that would seem to counter its minor overall framerate average advantage over much, much cheaper DDR4 RAM.
<RAM>
If you're someone who googles, ignore
the bad review for this Patriot RAM from Tom's Hardware. Reviews like that are aimed at RAM overclocking monkeys. That was at double the price it is here ($195 MSRP for two sticks instead of $100), and as you can see from the review, it performs exactly as expected when the XMP profile is enabled for a 4000MHz CL20 kit. You don't care about overclocking headroom because you won't manually overclock it. You'll select XMP in the BIOS, and voila, you're done. Besides, video editing can benefit from more RAM. It would be much better for your wife to buy 4x of these sticks for 64GB than to spend $150 for just 32GB of the next step up in RAM performance (4400MHZ CL19 kit).
<SSD>
ADATA S70 Blade is easily the cheapest high-end NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD out there. You can opt for the 1TB version for half the price, but since you're spending pretty big on this unit, I'd suggest the 2TB. No premium.
<PSU>
850W ought to be ample. As thrifty as can be for a top-tier unit.
<Case & Fans>
As mentioned above, I chose the Corsair 5000D Airflow because it supports side mounting for the 360mm AIO. This is ideal because you don't have to put it the front and suck hot air into the case, and you don't have to put it on top, where you might end up with uncomfortable clearance with the motherboard and its components. The case comes with 2x120mm fans: one in the front, and one in the back. You'll take the one from the front, and move it to the rearmost mount on the top of the case, oriented for exhaust. The two Arctic F14 fans (140mm) I suggest for purchase separately will be mounted to the front for intake. So it's traditional front-to-back airflow. Overall, it will be negative pressure, because the AIO will exhaust the CPU's hot air through those 3x120mm fans from the EVGA CLC cooler, so it's 2x140mm intake vs. 5x120mm exhaust in total, but that's okay.
<OS>
Windows 11 despite that it sucks because you want the full DX12 feature set.
