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Every unit with RGB stuff can have it turned off in the UEFI and software setting, so no reason to worry about that. Most of the better boards have it, like it or not.

CPU: AMD Ryzen is the best bang for your buck for an all around machine. Intel has higher clock speeds, but prices are higher too. If I was building today, Ryzen would be my choice, you get more cores and speed for less money, generally speaking. Cannot tell you what chips to go for, since you haven't given a budget. Best gaming chips are likely the Intel i7 9700k and AMD Ryzen 3700x. If that is too much the i5 9600k and Ryzen 3600x are good alternatives. VMware will work fine on any X86/x64 chip, so not sure why that would matter. If anything the higher core/thread count of Ryzen chips per $ spent gives them a huge advantage for virtual machines. Of course some UNIX based OSs, wont run on a AMD based systems in VMWare (like Mac OS for example), as far as I can tell, so if that matters, Intel it must be.

Motherboard: Depends on what brand of, and in Intel's case what series, of CPU you go for. Intel, K series chips require a Z series board (Z390 for 8/9 gen - 8xxxk 9xxxk chips) for example. For non-k chips, a B365 or H310 series board will work (both 8/9th Gen). AMD, you can go for B450 boards (really good value) or the higher end X470/X570 boards, totally depends on your budget and needs.

For a full ATX based system any of the big brands is okay, but ASUS still has the best UEFI BIOS by far. I'm in a league of pain with my Gigabyte board, that ignores some but not all settings I change, a real pain. No affect on real world use, just rams an auto all CPU overclocking feature on you no matter what you do. Just a buggy BIOS, with seemingly no fix in sight. ASROCK has some great ITX boards (B450 series) for Ryzen with built in AC WIFI and bluetooth 5.0. For features, that really depends on your needs, do you need more PCI-E slots for secondary stuff, or do you want more M.2 (PCI-E) drive slots? Other than the high end boards you usually have to make a choice between those two sadly. If you opt for an all in one water cooler for the CPU (don't bother if you don't overclock, a mid-range third party CPU cooler will do fine if you don't, go with Noctua or Coolermaster for air), then the number of USB2 headers on the motherboard will matter. Most have 1, while better boards have 2. One of the big picking points for me is always how many USB ports are on the rear IO, since I hate the wasted space created by USB hubs with a passion. Wired keyboard and mice are still the way to go for gaming, unless you want to spend well over $100 on each. Most boards have at least 6 now days, two of which will be USB 3.1 gen 2 (1 type A and 1 type C). If you want more type C ports, you'll need an PCI-E add-on card. If you want thunderbolt, you need an add-on card. I use GB Ethernet with my PC, so I cannot recommend WIFI add-ons, sorry cannot help there.

GPU: What is your monitors resolution? 1080p, 1440p, 4k? Refresh rate, 60Hz or faster? For 1080p, Nvidia 2060 or 2060 Super or Radeon 5700. For 1440p the AMD Radeon 5700XT and Nvidia RTX 2070 Super are the way to go. The Radeon is generally less expensive, but wait and see what prices are like in the big sales, since the NVIDIA cards do offer more features. If you have a 4k monitor, 2080 Super or a used GTX 1080Ti.

Storage: For the fastest operations you want NVMe (PCI-E) M.2 drives. For gaming you likely wont notice the difference from a SATA SSD, but it does make things snappier and makes wiring up the machine faster. Go for a 3D TLC drive for a boot drive, QLC is cheaper, but wont hold up to Windows virtual memory page files that will kill the speed advantage over a better TLC SATA drive. While there are SATA M.2 drives as well, but they are no different than the 2.5" models. 500GB drives are the sweat spot price wise and good for a boot drive. Samsung, Intel, and Western Digital all have good options with 5+ year warranties on the better drives. You could opt for 256GB, but they tend to have much lower write cycle endurance. For anything bigger than SATA is still the way to go, with 1TB drives being very reasonable in the US at around $100. Unless you really need an HDD for 2+TB of space I'd avoid them altogether. I have 3 3TB drives, but I'm uploading 50-100GB of photos from my cameras on a regular basis, so no way around it.

Power Supply, a big deal. Don't go cheap, get a EVGA Supernova, Corsair RMx or Seasonic unit (80+ Gold rated). All the good units have 10 year warranties and modular cables. If your budget for this is tight, at the very least 80+ Bronze rated unit. The 80+ Gold units will save you money when gaming, since they are more efficient under higher power loads. A basic system will only need a 550W unit, but if you have a higher end GPU a 650W one might be needed. Depends on how many secondary devices you have (drives and such).

More details or questions? Fire away!