The 290 is a proper power hungry, hot running card, that given the fact that it uses so much power, and runs so hot... isn't particularly great. Given a choice, considering you are thinking of gaming at 1440P in the near future, I'd definitely consider the GTX980. Fast, quieter, cooler, and uses less power. It's a no-brainer, and you also get ShadowPlay which is awesome. The EVGA cards with ACX2.0 cooling are unbelievably efficient in the cooling department too. At anything below 60C, the fans are off, and it's fully passive and silent, so when at the desktop, there's zero noise from it. Even at the highest I've seen temps (80C) when running BF4 @ 2560x1600 while over clocked, the fans were still only at 40% and basically inaudible.
Can't afford that, then there's only one real choice left, and that's the GTX970. Pay no attention to the crap you'll read about it being "flawed". It's a 4GB card, but the last 512MB of VRAM run slower is all. In practice, it still kicks the R9 290's ass, and runs even quieter and cooler than the GTX980 if you buy the EVGA one with ACX2.0. EVGA have the best warranties too. You'll get all the advantages of the above 980, but just not quit the same grunt... but still significantly better performance than the 290 when you consider the power and heat savings.... well. better full stop actually... just even more impressive when you factor in heat, noise and power.
The Z79 comes up on all the gaming rigs I've seen, so just picked that as a standard.
You've heard teh term "e-peen" I take it? If not.. look it up on urban dictionary or something, and you'll get your explanation why gaming rigs usually are unnecessarily over specced. Bragging rights is all.
I'm not saying don't... but if you want to save money, consider that a great deal of Z78 boards can run Haswell CPUs with a BIOS update. If you want Broadwell and boyond compatibility you will actually need Z79, but as for features... you're getting things you may not need, such as SATA Express M V2.0 and Thunderbolt. The new H79 Chipset boards are cheaper though, and will still support Broadwell, and will support Haswell straight out of the box. The higher end Z79 boards will have a more fully features BIOS designed for enthusiasts though, so if you plan on over clocking etc... then again... a decent high end Z79 board may be worthwhile. The Asus Maximus VII Ranger springs instantly to mind. Not cheap though.
The fact is it's getting more sensible to invest in higher end gear as progress slows down. Sounds stupid, but that's effectively what seems to be happening. I built this 3960X based rig in 2012, and When Ivy Bridge E came out, it was hardly any faster ... just a little more power efficient... and even though Haswell E is now here... it's just not worth the upgrade.. performance.... even with the 8 core version is just not worth the money. There's still little that can touch it despite 2 generations of CPU in teh meantime.. a tick and full-on tock in Inte's road map strategy... still not worth it. Go back maybe 6 or 7 years, and building a gaming rig with high end gear, and expecting it to be still viable in over 3 year's time was unthinkable. All I've had to do to keep this rig current is a GPU upgrades. GPUs are the crucial factor in gaming now... not CPUs. Fortunately... unless there's a new PCI_E standard on the horizon, upgrading GPUs is never that costly unless you go for the really top end stuff.
Displays are 2 1920 x 1080 24". I am not interested in bigger, was looking at 2560 x 1440 displays and may upgrade towards the end of the year. I normally only use 1 monitor for gaming apart from FSX.
If you only game on one, then all the cards discussed... R9 290, GTX970 and GTX980 are all MASSIVE overkill... but as you may well be gaming at 2560x1440, I recommend the GTX980 or 970 as above. FSX.. I assume you mean MS Flight Simulator X.... is more processor intensive than GPU intensive. The graphics engine is ancient, and almost any mid range GPU will cope admirably graphically. It's an old game though, and it isn't very demanding of modern hardware... even fairly modest modern hardware.
I will also be using the PC for ripping films but if there is no benefit on the i7 over the i5, I will drop to the i5.
The Hyper threading of the i7 will give a speed advantage to ripping DVDs and Blu Ray disks, yes... but it won't be an amazing saving.
