You didn't specifically mention the monitors, so wasn't aware if that was part of the budget. If you want an NVIDIA card for Ray Tracing, it will be best to consider having monitors that are at least officially GSync compatible:
Search for GeForce G-SYNC gaming monitors.
www.nvidia.com
Keep in mind to watch for the required cabling.
There are some pending hardware releases in the graphics market that are likely to shake things up a bit in the first quarter. I don't expect so much that any of it would be on your radar right off, but will quite likely make the older hardware take more aggressive and attractive pricing. For your use case and budget I feel like the 4070 ti variants should be in that sweet spot of performance to price.
Would consider AMD on either 7xxx or 9xxx, but for sure want to go with the X3D variants on that. Alongside that I always try to tend towards higher quality motherboards such as to have good VRM, feature set and so on. IDK if I would consider anything under 64GB of RAM at this point on a new 'gaming' build. For storage I feel that WD Black has some really good offerings to price. I am always a fan of Samsung, if not always their pricing.
Get a GOOD Gold or Platinum level of power supply. No reason to skimp here on that budget.
Cases are always a personal choice. You have to live with it and look at it every day. I am a HUGE fan of Lian Li right now in that space. YMMV Don't forget case fans or a consideration of case flow alongside noise when considering powerful hardware...
For RGB it can be pretty easy these days with very little forethought. Just check compatibility between the various parts for header and app for control.
If you have a MicroCenter nearby, that is a darned good place to start.