I'm a novice builder myself, but I have picked up pieces of knowledge from doing research. I would love to help someone who has almost the same goals with his/her new pc.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bVhhmG
Now comes the good stuff, the reasoning for every part.
CPU: This CPU will overclock very well getting you the maximum gaming experience. Since you aren't going for video editing, an i7 would be a waste. It is a very popular and very effective product that will be amazing for your new pc.
CPU cooler: The corsair h100i is one of the best CPU coolers ever. If you plan on overclocking, water cooling is a must to keep low temps.
Motherboard: very very very very very very goooooooood. It is just so well made and performs so well. If you prefer an MSI motherboard you could swap it out, but for me an asus Maximus vi IS going to be the heart of this build.
Storage: I got you 250gb of ssd to use when booting and a 1terrabite hdd that should be more than enough for gaming.
Video card: THIS IS WERE THE GUD STUFF LIES. The bad boy that will give you that perfect experience when gaming. The nvidia gtx 770 from evga, it is one of the best nvidia gtx 770s you can buy. The acx cooling keeps the beast suppressed at low temps and the factory overclock gives it a kick once you boot that new pc.
Case: this is pretty much a nice mid tower case made by nzxt. You really don't need a full tower unless you got some other plans to upgrade this pc a ton in the future. A mid case would be the perfect resting place for all your parts. The colors are pretty cool also. Swap this out if you don't like the colors for pretty much any other mid tower case. This one does keep low temps tho.
Psu: xfx is the best company to get your psu from. They are very experienced at what they do and provide the top notch quality products. It's full modular meaning not all the cables are wired in and you can plug in the cables that are needed(comes with it) to use. Helps keep a nice tidy pc. Also the 80+ gold efficiency rating is a nice add on. 750watts should be plenty of headroom for your pc if you overclock. Otherwise if you won't overclock switch this to a lower watt psu.
Optical drive: can't really pick for you, I don't know if you want to watch blue ray movies and such. There are many that aren't that expensive and run well.
Well that's my take on building a pc with that budget. Feel free to do research and swap any part that you don't like. I hope this answered your question!
😀
Huge edit: OMG I forgot the memory: gskill ripjaws run perfectly with these parts. They run great too with intel chipsets. You don't really need more the 8gigs of ram for gaming. You also don't need any higher speeds than 1866. It would be just a waste of money!