okay so im going to try to help, i just built my first pc, but had about the same wants/needs from the machine.. after a TON of research, and talking with some close, experienced & knowledgeable people this is the general consensus i picked up:

processor/mobo: the unlocked haswell processors are more than enough for gaming & media - i54690k is what i picked. i74790k is its big brother and from what i understand doesnt yeild much better, maybe nominal at best results in comparison... MOBO is really a pref. thing but i went with asus z97 pro wifi so i got integrated bluetooth & wifi along with all the connections id need even if i went sli (2 gpus). also picked asus due to good customer support & service.

cooling: i would get a closed loop (already filled and sealed) liquid cpu cooler because they preform very well, and have proven to be pretty reliable when not installed stupidly (too much tension at tube joints) and if your case needs it maybe an extra fan, but most cases come with a good bit of them from the factory, usually 2-3, you get an intake fan for the watercooler so if you have 2 in the case, you ultimately come out with 3 fans on the box.

video card : MSi gtx980 - i got the 970 but i limited myself to a 1500$ machine, the 980 is a good bit more for not a whole ton more performance imo. Some will say go AMD and get a R9 290 ... again, if you look at benchmarks and data, the difference even with only 1 card is nominal unless your displaying frame rates, and even less with cards running in sli. this area is also really where a lot of the money gets spent so if you want to spend your budget, and really want future proof, there are some really high end graphics cards i dont know a whole lot about that maybe someone else can chime in on. some get as expensive as your budget alone for perspective.

ram: again, nominal on brand imo - need at least 8gb ddr4 but you can always add more down the line if needed.. i saw something dumb about a kid loading his cpu up with like 5-6 games running modded and some other unheard of stuff you would never do and could only get it to use up about 7.75gb ram so while im confident 8 is good, i went with 16gb just to be able to swing my nuts lol idk. i just didnt wanna have it be a bottle neck and didnt fully understand at the time of purchase.

hdd/ssd: im running a samsung evo 840 250gb ssd as a boot drive and i think the hdd is a seagate 7200rpm 3tb.. the 7200rpm is the important part for running the games. i have also considered running a game off the ssd should i ever find the hdd to be bottlenecking the system - so far so good.. theres a lot of options out there but this again, is preferential parts stuff here, diff ppl will say diff things.. just go for a company with known good customer service for the just in case stuff.

youll want a dvd drive, reader at minimum, if you want you can get into the burner drives , blueray etc - i personally woulda skipped this if all the hardware didnt come with cds for install.

then a power supply - id say go with something modular/semi-modular about 7-850watts output. i have a cx600m and its fine, but if i added a videocard, it may get a pretty good workout. if you enter all your parts in pc parts picker it will give you an estimated system voltage im told is pretty accurate (not exact)

this is my build, and im able to max everything out so far in 1080p at stock cpu & gpu clocks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pCk7gs