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Originally Posted by duck fat
1) Having more RAM is never a bad idea but sometimes a manufacturer will charge you an arm and a leg for RAM upgrades. 16GB should be more than enough unless you're doing some serious multi-tasking. Photo and video editing software are usually CPU intensive so the i7-6700 will be great for your use case. IIRC, the new Adobe CC recently added some hardware acceleration done by the graphics card but I've read that it's not so great.
2) Absolutely. An SSD is the best bang for the buck upgrade you can do for a PC. I would suggest a good size SSD (about 250gb - 500gb) for applications and a large HDD for your files (photos, videos, and RAW files).
3) Wattage wise, your PSU should be enough since a 450Watt should be enough to power an i7 with a GTX970. The only obstacle you'll run into is whether or not the PSU will have the necessary 6 or 8 pin PCI-E power cables that the card will require. If needed, you could buy a 4-pin molex to 6 or 8 pin adapter to make the card work.
SATA III is backwards compatible with SATA II so it shouldn't cause any issues. What kind of noise is it making? Hard Disk Drives do make a bit of noise, especially when they're spinning up to perform a read or write operation. Lack of sound or vibration dampening in the computer case can make this noise more audible. If it's a clicking noise, that's bad news as it's a sign that the drive is starting to die.
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Thanks for the response. Yes, I've been quite impressed with the XPS 8900 so far. Certainly a big upgrade from my last PC. I did some research, and turns out the Western Digital Blacks are just a bit noisier than the other hard drives out there. But they're reliable and perform well, so I suppose that is the trade off.
I'm contemplating SSD, but I run my NVR software on the same machine and am afraid that it would prematurely wear out the SSD. Problem is that the NVR writes all the TMP files to the drive where the application is running off first, before storing all the video files on a separate hard drive. Something to think about for now, until the software has the ability to move the TMP folder onto another drive.
As far as the video card is concerned, I might stick with a GTX 960. I don't even play games, so I should probably suffice.