Have you tried installing Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 (which is FREE), and then back in to it? It doesn't come with anything except powershell, task manager and a set of network drivers and features like NIC teaming, Storage Spaces, etc. and of course the Hyper V role installed.
As an exercise in futility I managed to get bbLean installed (explorer.exe shell, since the OS doesn't come with one), which allowed me to get Google Chrome and Steam installed, before I ran out of interest trying to get DirectX installed.
I think if you installed Cygwin you could get DirectX installed properly, or maybe just follow one of those "Gaming on Windows Server 2012 R2" guides. It's possible, but the artificial divide between server and desktop "class" drivers makes things more difficult.