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

Yeah, I admit, even today it's a great CPU. *2500K high fives*

Why?

For example?

No worries.  Just programming is software, and programmers often have no idea about hardware.

The shop that will assemble it said they have all the parts you mentioned. This is another great alternative. Thank you.

Crossing out Titan. Great advice. Money spent wisely is more important to me even at the cost of MORE POWER! Thank you.  The monitor choice you mentioned is what I'm looking for... enough to get my 60fps or better at the tail end of the three year-end cycle. Then it's just a matter of installing a new CPU and GPU and not having to worry about the rest. The case, cooling, etc. are projected long-term solutions (5-7) years. It may sound like a long time, but I also take pride in craftsmanship and pushing things way past their warranty. And thank you.

I haven't read the whole thread, but if you are really only going for 1080p than an i7 + 1080ti is overkill imo. I would go with an i7 7700k + 1070/1080. Also, it should be noted that AMD Vega should be released within the next 2 months (which could also drop the prices of nvidia cards as well).

For CPUs, I recommend to people to either get the Ryzen 5 1600 or Intel i7 7700k depending on budget. Since you have a very high budget, I would go 7700k (technically you could go with higher model i7 but the cost to performance is generally not worth it).

As for people wondering why the R5 over an i5, they are both very close in gaming benchmarks with AMD being better for productivity because of having more cores. The i5 generally has slightly higher average FPS than the R5, but the R5 tends to have better frametimes (more important imo as it leads to smoother feeling gameplay) in high CPU usage games. The Ryzen cpus is also a new platform and as game developers optimize they should get better in time. The R5 1600 has a decent stock cooler so that can save you a little bit as well (generally I don't recommend using Intel stock coolers even if not overclocking).

The 1080ti would be great for 1440p gaming (w/ 144/165 hz monitor). It can do 4k in games now, but in 2-3 years, probably not at 60+ fps. GTX 1080 for 1440p and 60-100 fps or 1080p at 144/165 fps. For others on a budget the AMD RX 480 is generally the best option and is a great card for 1080p gaming.

For 4k gaming, I would honestly wait until the next gen nvidia cards to see how good they are (they should use HBM memory hopefully). AMD Vega is coming very soon, but I don't expect it to be better than the 1080ti or Titan Xp. I'm guessing it will compete with the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 at better price to performance. AMD cards tend to age better as well with performance increases with driver updates while nvidia tends to stop optimizing after a while (they want you to buy the newest cards).

I have built several PC over the years for myself and friends and family with many different combinations (AMD+Nvidia, Intel+Nvidia, AMD+AMD/ATI, Intel+AMD/ATI). For CPUs, they both are fine although Intel has dominated performance-wise over the last decade. It is nice to see Ryzen give the Intel some competition for a change. AMD/ATI graphics drivers had issues many years ago and developed a bad rap, but nowadays they are fine and have no more problems than nvidia. It has been said by some that the Ryzen CPUs don't do as well when paired with Nvidia cards, but that is probably due to Nvidia having to update their drivers to optimize compatibility.

...

Ok, I may have to go down in size then. I'm not crazy about SLI or dual card stuff. It seems to complicated to get the games to do what their supposed to do. So, Griffith82, I'm checking monitors again. Thanks.

Yeah, learning that now after reading the Water-cooling setups. They're aren't like refrigerators, more like car radiators. So more fans, regardless and clean air flow. I just cut a section of indoor house filter and placed it against the hole, I had to carve out, in the desk (which is an antique, so please forgive me the carpenter who made it) that will be sucking air where my feet will be. I also have two dogs, one is a Belgian Malanois/German shepherd mix (My DOGMEAT! His name is Jack) who goes through periods of shedding. Lots of it. Imperative to keep the air flow unobstructed and clean.

I would say -never- buy a top-end Nvidia card (XX80) when it's newish.
One step down to a 1070, and you'll get the same RAM, and about 85+% of the performance for a whole lot cheaper.

Also, i7's are overrated for gaming. An i5 will do just as well.
In fact, I can run this game on High at 4k with an i5-4690k and a GTX 1070. ...strangely enough it runs just about identical on my other system which is an i7-4790k with a 1070.

I'm not a programmer, but I build systems to run research simulations at a university research lab.
The processor hype is just that, hype. Unless your application is specifically written for and optimized to utilize more than 4 cores it does you almost no good. And the majority of games are optimized with less than 8 cores (or threads in Intel's case) in mind.

When you are running say intel CPU and a Radeon card numerous compatibility issues pop up. There are ways to fix them but not for a novice who is told by some computer clerk what should go with what. Biggest issue is the CPU working harder to pull the graphics and it causes bigger issues if the game is designed for one setup or the other.