PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Relatively standard $2.5k photo editing/video game build.

Monitor selection: This Benq and the Asus PB278Q are about your two best bets at this pricepoint for gorgeous 1440p monitors, I would get either one depending which is on sale. There are several others, but most others get more expensive (namely the Dell equivalent). The VG248QE doesn't have the best colors, but is an awesome 144hz monitor which is great for gaming, especially CS:GO.

Power supply can be swapped out depending what's on sale at the moment. As long as you're above 600w brand and reliability matter far more than wattage, as a general rule stick with seasonic, xfx, evga, corsair (besides the cx line) - other brands have some great units (antec, silverstone, thermaltake) but not all of them are great.

970 is all you'll need for GPU power, and when you decide it isn't enough you can easily add a 2nd one.

I highly suggest using a cloud service to back up your files, rather than your own local storage. It's more reliable, higher capacity and cheaper. Myriads of things can happen to local storage. Cloud storage is much safer.

500gb ssd should be plenty to store any current projects.

R5 is my personal favorite for ATX cases. It also has a non-windowed version if you prefer that.

That Crucial ram is about the best $$$/gb while also being from the most reputable brand when it comes to ram.

If you need any help building, let me know, I'll be living in SF this summer. I also have some of that DDR4 ram for sale (sealed in package) if you want to save a little bit.