PC MASTER RACE! I need your wisdom. If you're a programmer type, please help me.

Oh also - not sure why people are voting for ATI graphics cards in your poll. ATI (now renamed to Radeon Technologies Group, and is now owned by AMD) doesn't have a high end GPU. Radeon is currently targeting the sub-$300 price range with their products, and that doesn't really belong in a high-end system like the one you're planning. They're currently hyping up their as-yet unreleased Vega product line, which is supposed to compete with the products at the top of Nvidia's product stack, but they haven't released any information about it at all.

Pearl, thank you! 

Half my my budget is going towards the Intel i7 and nVidia card. I'm buying an SSD for the OS, but I have a WD 2Tb HD that I will use just to keep games. I may buy another SSD for games that I'm constantly using.

Cool. Thank you!

I tried SLI once, had 580 and instead of buying the best single card, which I think was a 980 at the time, I went for a second 580.  Was a nightmare lol.  I don't know if this is still the case, but then you could pretty much assume that at the release of a game SLI wasn't supported.  I swore I would never do it again.

Because I didn't notice his budget, lol. I'm about to change my vote. If money isn't much of an issue then it makes sense to go nvidia.

Thank you Invellous. Oh my goodness. This is great! Yes, I definitely want to just say Ultra settings and get about 60 fps for the next three years or longer. 

Not very useful for the OP, who looks set to go higher, but there are a lot of used i5s kicking around for $200 or so. Not gaming machines without adding a GPU and probably an upgraded PSU, but a good start.

I'm going to place the order on June 1st. Around mid-June, I figure I will have all the parts to have it assembled at the shop, The poll is up until May 30th. I'm excited, though. I don't have any real vices and I'm middle-aged (F***, I hate saying that.) so I don't have the urge to go out unless it's to a movie theater or see an outdoor concert in Austin or here in SA. Getting a computer built is way more exciting that shopping for a truck, a car, a camper, a boat, etc. I'm just an old-school nerd.

Server based sure.

Last I checked gaming doesn't take server based chips, or server based performance.

Gaming performance a i7-6700k is still beating ryzen chips.

I'm seeing that now. I also need to buy a monitor. My 28" CRT Philips monitor is freakin' 3:4 dude. It's time for an upgrade which is hopefully included in the $3500.

Fully agree.

The one area that you didn't mention is your monitor preference, which may have a bearing on your video card choice which might have a bearing on the Power Supply choice. And if you're going full tilt on this system with that budget, make sure you get a top rated Power Supply and one that will power the whole system.

If you already have a monitor that you don't intend on upgrading, then match the video card to that (and Power Supply if needed). If you have a 20" to 24" monitor, some of the high end video cards are not cost effective.

But if you also want to upgrade to some huge monitor/tv then you need to spend more time considering which video card/Power Supply.

Another factor that you have not mentioned, if you'll be playing SP and/or MP. With MP you'll want to consider two things - maybe a modem update as well as a monitor with low input lag/low display lag - i.e. very fast screen redraws/refresh rates. TVs generally are very slow refresh rates.

A few people  have mentioned liquid cooled units - case fans, video card fans, CPU fans can be noisier on the higher powered units. But the newer CPUs, cases and case fans are of much better quality now and something to consider, whether you chose air or liquid cooled (which also has fans) - ask your builder about fans.

Cases - lots of options here depending on whether you want components visible with lots of bling lighting etc.