Well it's fairly safely assumed you'll be gaming if you post a build with a R9 290 in it...
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hLgJgs
While I think, for your uses, a 4790k will be more than enough with the right hardware around it, here's a $2500ish socket 2011 build that's $13 over the halfway budget... I mean, yea, if you truly want computing power, socket 2011 will blow the socks off anything that's been mentioned... the mobo isn't on the high end, but it's plenty sufficient... the Mushkin SSD is a nice SSD... Hitachi Deskstar is the most reliable HDD on the market... and 100w over the max pull is the baseline for a PSU... for another $15 the 750w EVGA fully modular is there if you really want the above and beyond headroom... hell you can knock a few bucks off in case fans, you don't need an anti-static mat to build a computer.... touch the case... if you have basic tools at the house you won't need a 90 piece professional computer building kit either...
if you have a phillips screw driver, you're gtg... I mean there's $800 in not even performance related stuff in your build outline... I will say you're not gonna find a red/black mobo in socket 2011 (unless you do the Biostar model, NOT recommended)... I like the Asus Deluxe model, but it's $100 more...
If I were to redo the entire build with $2500 to work with and you didn't care to sacrifice some bling, it's EASILY doable with high quality parts... just showing you there's options beyond a very rigid "here's my build I'm not changing anything" :P
So what could you if I said that my limit was 2,500 excluding the extras (monitor, mouse, lights, keyboard, all not included in that build) it has to have either a corsair ax/axi or evga p2/g2 power supply, and has to have a red/black theme to it...or if it has to be it could be a blue and black theme but red/black would be better.
I do some gaming however you are right about that but most of what I need it for is doing alot of video encoding and DVD ripping...not to share btw..for personal use....but I want to play games on ultra on a 27" monitor. Games like the Sims 2-4, theif, watchdogs, la noire, soul suspect, gta vice city and higher, maybe a little of call of duty, racing games, and finally strategy games like civilization and total war.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/t6gt99
I even included a blu ray drive so you can rip HD movies... This is definitely what I would get. If you need more space get another 2 TB drive.
I like bit I'd probably get a 4 terabyte and drop the blue-ray for now I dont own any bluray discs atm. Also that is the case I was using for my fiance's and really don't want matching cases so is probably go with the phantom 630 windowed edition, and an Asus rog motherboard. Other then that I like it.
I would highly suggest getting 2 2TB drives and putting them in RAID 0 or something. 4TB drive reliability is pretty terrible.
Update with Twin Builds (Limit $2,500 give or take for each computer = $5,000 g.o.t. for 2 systems):
Link To:
Premium Enthoo Pro (My Computer)
The Corsair Legend (Fiance's Computer)
Let me know what you think.
Bit overkill on the power supply(850w will be plenty for 2 780tis). Otherwise, looks great. Awesome how you're building a computer for your fiance.
Yea..my first one I built I couldn't really get her to stay off it -.-, and that was an AMD FX-8350 with an overclock to 4.5 GHZ (auto-overclock from asus motherboard). She loved that thing, but I was short some money and had to sell it to a dad for xmas for his ten year old son....(at the time we had that desktop and 2 laptops), now she sold her laptop since she never used it (Core 2 Duo) and I am going to upgrad her to her own desktop so she can use it whenever she wants to...along with making myself one of course....as for the power supplies I know they are a bit overkill....however at that price point I really don't care...(plus saying you have a 1,300 watt power supply gives you bragging rights). lol