I don't recommend an SSD at your price point. You can save that for later- they are great but not essential. While you do notice a difference in load times, this isn't actually important when on a budget and I consider it non essential. I usually recommend waiting (until later) on those kinds of hardware when you're building on a budget. The change, while significant, is not enough for me to say it's a must at all. You will enjoy it when you get it, but I recommend you wait for now.
I agree with the CPU being more important recommendation that you are set upon now (from what I can tell- just reading past replies here). If you were actually near me I could sell you (cheaply I mean) a decent GPU that would suffice for now until you could afford a better one. It's a GTX 560 ti- the model I have actually was an experimental card that had a short release (I only mention that because you'll notice they're expensive now if you buy a new one and that's due to them not being made anymore but it's actually a damn good card if you do want to look at a refurbished one). I will warn you if you look into finding that card that some of them were defective (the voltage can be off but at the time EVGA was super cool about replacing them- might be a risk now, I don't know), but if you get a good one they are really good cards for overclocking that made them almost- if not just- as good as a 660 (if that's even something you care about).
If you actually do look into a 660 I recommend considering a GTX 760 instead because they would only be a few dollars more and are actually better cards than a 660. But again you can also just wait and buy a cheaper GPU right now. Just trying to give you some options and let you know the pros and cons I can think of off the top of my head.
AMD is alright, but the reason people tend to dislike them (minus a lot of bias) is they lack a lot of support. It is still true of AMD- sometimes they just aren't well optimized for certain games. It happens all the time (read many gaming forums), and in my experience it is less likely to be a problem with Intel or NVidia. The plus side to AMD products (CPU and GPU) is that they can be (although sometimes for only a short time) just as good as the competition- for less. Monetarily this is attractive for a cheaper build. Something you should consider because of this is that AMD products can tend to be (again, in my experience) higher maintenance.
I will say in 25 years of using computers I have personally always gone with Intel for CPUs. They can be expensive, but they have always been reliable (and only errors were due to something I did- usually involving the bending of pins because I was dumb). I have never had a CPU fail, though, on it's own, or not meet expectation when looking into game purchases. The i5 recommended to you would be good for awhile and on the plus side you should be able to get a decent enough mobo that you could also potentially upgrade the chip to an i7 if that ever actually became necessary so I consider that a plus.
I personally prefer Nvidia GPUs. I suppose, though, this is brand loyalty a lot of the time, but I have heard of and seen some issues on Radeon cards that I've honestly never experienced on an NVidia card. This could also change, though, in the coming generation as AMD is in a position to do something about the market if they actually fix some things in their company. So, it's completely possible that my brand loyalties could change if AMD did get their act together (which, again, they could potentially do).
Honestly, often with GPUs it's not a big deal. Most of the time it's brand loyalty (as you've seen with your friends), but I just wanted to lay out my perspective.
Hope you find what you're looking for. Sorry I wrote so much- I cant help it when my brain gets going. Hopefully this is even slightly helpful.
Editted: Added some links.
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