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

An I5 will work as long as it's 4.0ghz quad core or above. That's if you don't want to replace it soon.

I'm not stalking you, i swear   but:

I have i5 2500K and had it paired with:

1) Radeon 6950
2) R9 290
3) RX 480

Zero issues popped up.

Also had Pentium 3 paired with some Nvidia cards, also no problems.
Athlon x4 paired with both Nvidia (FX5200 i believe) and Radeon (HD 3850), never noticed "communication" problems.

If a game is designed for one setup, than that's not something you can blame on hardware. Just like when a game uses GWorks, you can't blame it on AMD.

A lot of it is going to depend on the resolution of the monitor rather than its physical size. What I'd say right now in terms of GPU is:

> If you're going for 1080p then the 1060 will do okay, or the 1070 if you want more power. The 1070 will likely last more than 3 years because it is kind of still overkill at 1080p right now.
> If you're going for 1440p then the 1070 will do okay but the 1080 will be better overall for games coming out in the next 2-3 years. The 1080ti is overkill in this area and will likely last more than 3 years.
> At 4k if you're serious about 60 FPS then I would say hold out for the next gen of GPUs from Nvidia, otherwise 1080ti is the best choice right now.

Some of it will also depend on how badly you want to maintain ultra settings in games as well. In most of the ME:A benchmarks I can find at 1440p the 1070 is a few frames short of averaging 60 FPS, but that's at ultra. You can push more life out of it if you don't mind going to high at some point, or turning a few things down that are particularly demanding like AA.

In this case I'd probably recommend the GTX 1080. Looking at benchmarks for ME:A, the 1080 tends to average in the high 60s while the 1070 is usually sitting a bit short of 60.

So even though the 1070 is doing okay right now, it'll probably start dropping below 60 more in games over the next 2-3 years while the 1080 has some room to work with.

and ME:A is one of the most demanding games out there right now, so its benchmark isn't too bad of one to look at.

There used to be a lot of games that either had a tag of works best with Nvidia (Crysis) and some with Amd. Now that has changed slightly and companies have tried to make cross compatibility better. I'm not saying it always causes issues there are plenty of times it doesn't but when it doesn't work it's usually a spectacular mess.

Yeh I'm the same want bang for my buck but also want to use max settings when i have the funds. The 1080Ti is a beast of a card and reasonably priced compared to the Titan X it just isn't needed for the original monitor you linked which had a resolution of 1920-1080. 

If you go the 2k monitor route id advise getting either the 1080Ti (it's 11GBVram will mean its sli potential in the future is safer especially at 2K resolution, you never know but 8GB might not be enough in 4+ years) or an Asus Strix 1080 Asus Strix cards are stably overclocked and have better cooling. They cost a little extra but that extra performance keeps them maxing out games for another 3-6 months after the stock cards start to slow down. In 2 years time i'd imagine buying a second 1080strix near the end of year 3 would extend the lifetime by another 2 years. 

I would also advise that the 1080 is already a year old next month. So again if you have the time to wait till the revised model comes in later this year and getting the 2080 It will give you more lifespan for your money. This would also allow you to see if 8GB will still be enough Vram to handle max settings at 2k in 3 1/2 years time. As if you go the 1080 route now when it comes to upgrading your risking that not enough information will be available to see if the Vram will survive. The 780Titan (4 Years old) had this problem, its 3GB memory left putting it in sli useless even at 1080p (even though this was a standard even 4 years ago) as most games now are requiring 3-4GB Andromeda is very close to hitting 4GB at 1080p maxed out. The 980Titan however had 6GBVram and while that will probably struggle in 2 years (when it is 4 years old) at 2k resolutions (though it might not) it will definitely get a long long life span in sli at 1080p.

All the current cards coming out this year at 8GBVram are the last of their generation. The next generation from AMD and Nvidia due in 2018/2019 will have 12-16GB. Now as these aren't standard cards that isn't a concern, but once they've been out 2-3 years and the second wave of that generation comes out that can lead developers to push graphics up for those who want to max their settings  (what we are seeing with most AAA games in 2017 now they starting to leave the 4GB cards behind at max settings at 1080p). Here i do believe the 11GB Ti is a safer bet for 2k resolutions but that's only if your wanting to sli up in 3-4 years time meaning you wouldn't have to spend much on a gcard in 3 years time (more money for other upgrades/holiday/car/whatever), if not your better going the 1080strix and then replacing it with its equivalent later on but this will cost more in the long run.

Make sure you don't just get a 250GB SSD for windows and general files. It is extremely worth getting a 500-1TB SSD and having your big AAA games on that SSD it will speed up everything from starting the game to all the loading times. Especially when your paying for a solid CPU you don't want it bottlenecked because your games are running from a HDD. I don't believe it well help in real time during games but those loading screens speeding up makes a big difference.