■~$1200 budget. Give or take a couple hundred, maybe.
■I have no intention of overclocking, nor SLI.
■I do a lot of video and photo editing, and also use my pc as my media center. Game a bit. More stuff like Football Manager or Cities rather than Witcher 3 or GTA V (although I have them all). Usually have a heavy load running all the time. That along with no OC-ing is why I chose the Xeon E3 and H97 MOBO. Literally learned about all this stuff in the last couple days so correct me if I'm wrong.
■Ideally I would like to stay within the red theme, if possible.
■I'm guessing the PSU is overkill, but this very forum seems adamant about the EVGA G2 series and the 650w is only like 3 dollars cheaper than the 750w right now.
■Honestly no clue on the MOBO. There was one I liked, but I can't find it online other than this one listing on Amazon marked up 120%. Yeah, no thanks. Feel moderately comfortable about the Asus H97-PLUS, however I will gladly take suggestions here.
■Cable sleeving vs extensions. Is it preference or does one have an advantage?
■As a completely noob builder, do I need anything else? I have the peripherals and basic tools and cables. Thermal paste? Is a cooler necessary? Change the fans? Specific PC tools? Let's pretend what's in this list and stuff like screwdrivers and HDMI cables are all I own. Anything I need?
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($252.29 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus H97-PLUS ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($99.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($107.64 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card ($339.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT S340 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM (64-bit) (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $1122.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-04 21:44 EDT-0400