If this is in the wrong spot I'll ask the most to move it.  

Looking to buy a desktop, tried of gaming on a laptop.  To make it easy I'll list the games I play and other things i need it to do.

Arma 3 and the others/Dayz, Ect
Rocket League
GTA
Possibly that new Clancy game, ghosts or whatever.

Other things it'll be used for:
DAW like Reaper using a Focusrite 2i4
Photoshop/Lightroom
Adobe Premiere Pro
3d rendering programs, home/cabinet design.

What I'd like?
A no bullshit tower, fuck lights, just a no frills tower with a few hard drive bays.
USB2 and 3.0
Solid state drive 500GB prefer 1tb
16 meg ram, high speed
Nvidia graphics, with ability to overclock, multiple monitor would be nice, but for gaming it isn't important. Don't need nor want 4K
Intel processor
Using Win 8.1 I can get my own copy

I don't know what gear goes for these days, been abroad so long I don't know if newegg, or tiger is still the bees knees.  It'd be awesome to get all those things for $500 or less, but I will go over if I have no other choice.

Well what am I looking at spending?  I can physically build my own, but part compatibility what's good, what isn't I'be been out of the loop too long to do that part myself.

Thanks and hopefully my details are enough, clear and not filled with BS

start here

https://pcpartpicker.com/

Didn't really specify an exact budget, but this should easily do what you need. 500gb ssd, 2tb hdd, i7 for heavy lifting computing tasks, 1080 should be plenty to handle the games you're playing. 16gb RAM should be enough but they're 8gb sticks so you can expand down the line. Decent motherboard, power supply with wiggle room for upgrades. Quality understated case.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($343.39 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($76.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($152.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($159.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($69.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Superclocked Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card  ($584.89 @ B&H)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($109.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($116.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1709.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-08 10:10 EST-0500

edit: CPU has room for overclocking with the decent air cooler I listed. GPU not so much. The 1080 series cards don't have a lot of room for overclocking since they're already boosting near the limit generally. The 1080ti might be worth holding out for if it gets announced soon. The titan is a step above but isn't as great a value. It's the best card out there now but is less overall value IMHO. The 1070 is probably the best bang for the buck but is less powerful than the 1080. If this is under or over budget I can punch something else up. I didn't include monitors, keyboard, or mouse as I figured you'd have an idea what you wanted for your work.

Awesome thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.  Already got a monitor etc.  1700 is a bit more than what I was hoping to spend, but fuck it, this way I won't be upgrading shit next year.  Thanks a ton you made this whole thing easy~

You can probably shave some off that total if you hunt for deals, those are all just current prices without sales. Go to reddit, r/buildapcsales has some good deals sometimes. If you just plug stuff into pc part picker then it will weed out any compatibility issues for you

Opting instead for a blistering fast SSD and for more RAM, I composed this build if you are still soliciting.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($343.35 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($34.88 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI Z270 PC MATE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($124.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($106.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung 960 Evo 1TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($479.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Video Card  ($588.51 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Titanium) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($99.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($79.33 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1857.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-09 05:00 EST-0500

The SSD is worth the price of admission.

Those are really nice builds, but you don't have to spend anywhere near that much for a tower. You could come out with a nice one for $800-1000.by scaling back on some of the parts.

You won't need that much power if your not going to use 4K.

True, OP did say he's doing some work on it and games today are making more use of the extra cores of an i7. You can build a decent 1080p gaming rig for 800-1000 like you said, but you do cut some corners.

The graphics card can come way down if you're only at 1080p.  2560x1440 or more i'd stick with the gtx 1080.

If you can afford to wait a few months, I would wait and see what AMD Ryzen has to offer.

That being said, SSD and RAM prices are speculated to continue to rise/be high for several months. (16GB of DDR4 RAM has doubled over the past 7 months).

This. I'd at least get the SSD and RAM sooner rather than later. Ryzen will use DDR4 and so will whatever newish intel cpu you use, so no loss getting it now.

@Gearhead. REEAAALLLLLYYYYYYY depends on the game and refresh rate. I''d generally agree but if pushing 3 monitors, rendering, or pushing one high refresh monitor then I'd say a 1080 is still a solid choice. 1070 is great and all and is the best bang for the buck IMHO, but I push a 1080p 144hz monitor with a 1080 and for most games it's overkill, but for others it really isn't.

Thanks for all the tips and sample builds guys.  Going from laptop to tower I'm sure 1080p will be more than good enough, 4k maybe in a few years, but for now I want some decent framerate, ability to use AA, and have a SSD.  Didn't realize ram prices were going up.  Good to know.

Also, the AMD Vega series GPUs may finally get released here soon. That may have an affect on nVidia GPU prices.

How is memory getting more expensive? I thought memory and hard drives go down as tech improves.

The tech improves, but there is a somewhat limited manufacturing base that is concentrated in certain geographic areas, and manufacturing capacities are not all that flexible.  Surges in demand due to (for instance) a new generation of graphics card can cause shortages, and also local events can cause reduction in supply - the Japan earthquake in 2011 caused shortages in certain memory chips and controllers, resulting in price spikes.  Flooding in Thailand in 2011 similarly disrupted hard drive supplies by flooding factories which made up about 33% of the world's daily production.  Limited supply or increased demand leads to higher prices until the situation sorts itself out.

Mike

Demand has been increasing, but production has not. Especially for flash memory and mainstream adoption of SSDs. There are very few actual manufacturers of this stuff. Samsung is a big one.

In addition to the two posts above keep in mind that as the manufacturing process gets smaller it can mean smaller yields sometimes due to higher failure rates/lower yields on the fabs. Even if production were going up faster demand is just crazy for storage. People are moving away from HDDs in droves and just about everything has some sort of flash/ram storage manufactured by samsung or one of the other big guys.