Hmm... well, every builder has their own preferences, and mine are obviously different from Gargoyle's. For gaming, AMD's Athlon 64 is better than the Pentium 4, and a bit less expensive too (plus you get the nice feeling of supporting the underdog rather than the dynasty). ATI makes good graphics cards just like nVidia, but I'd only go with them if you want low end or super high end. For midrange to moderately high end video cards, nVidia has better deals. If you want to spend under $200, go ATI. $200-$400, go nVidia. Over $400, back to ATI. At least, that's what I would personally do. My GeForce 6800 card was $280 and ATI doesn't offer anything at all in that price range that can come close to the 6800's performance. The 6800GT is an excellent card too, but it's really pricey at $400.
And that brings me to another problem... currency units and vendors. InactionMan is talking about Canadian dollars and I guess won't have access to a lot of the really popular American vendors like NewEgg, so the prices will be higher than I say. And Gargoyle is totally weird... talking in pounds... and I probably haven't even heard of the place from which he bought all that stuff. At least with Canada I can confidently say that I'm familiar with TigerDirect.
Anyway, since Gargoyle did it, I'll post my own rig and the price for each component:
Case: Antec SLK3700AMB (roomy, well built, not too flashy) ($70)
Power Supply: 350W Antec included with case
Motherboard: EPoX nForce3 w/ socket 754, 2xSATA, 3xRAM, Gigabit ethernet ($75)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2.0 GHz) w/ retail heatsink ($150)
RAM: Corsair Value Select 2x512 MB PC3200 ($170)
Video card: BFG GeForce 6800 w/ 128 MB VRAM ($280)
Hard drive: Seagate 200 GB SATA ($115)
Optical drive: NEC ND-3500A 16x DVD burner ($80)
Sound card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ($80)
Speakers: Logitech Z-560 THX-certified 4.1 (refurbished, $75)
Floppy drive: some cheap-ass brand, $8 (and yes I have used it)
Monitor: IBM C190 19" CRT (refurbished, $150)
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech Cordless MX Duo (now discontinued, $75 when I bought it)
So it was a little over a grand in US dollars, when I bought it. Nowadays the price for many of the components hasn't changed (like the RAM, video card, monitor, and speakers), but many of them are a lot cheaper (motherboard, processor). I'd suggest going with a Socket 939 motherboard and processor instead of 754 like I did - back when I built mine, 939 was a lot more expensive and didn't offer retail processors so I would have had to buy a third-party heatsink as well.
I have a huge amount of knowledge accumulated through my various experiments in building and gaming with PCs, so if you have any other questions I can probably help. Right now I'd suggest looking for parts similar to what I listed and seeing how much they are. If you want to trim away some excess cost, I can probably help you with that too. It might be a good idea to have him skimp on certain areas and save some money. $2500 Canadian is probably enough to afford a cheap-ish gaming PC in addition to a used iBook. Unfortunately he probably won't be up for that, but if you could try pitching the idea to him that if he saves a little money on the gaming PC, he can also get an inexpensive laptop, he might be interested. You know how kids are these days with their laptops.
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