advice for building a gaming rig around $1500

I would suggest something similar to the above (although do not purchase a Corsair CX or EVGA Nex if you plan on doing any sort of overclocking) :

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($369.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H5 Universal 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($46.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: EVGA Z170 FTW ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($173.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.59 @ Directron)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 980 4GB STRIX Video Card ($479.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($68.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($90.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1473.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-20 18:49 EDT-0400

Slightly weaker GPU but you get a much stronger CPU. The GPU will be easy to replace (or add a second one), the CPU won't.

I think at this price range it is worth it to push for the 980ti. The 980 doesn't have the best price/performance ratio, but the 980 ti is Titan performance at only 65% of the cost. The stronger CPU won't be noticed that much in gaming applications, if at all, because they often don't use hyperthreading, are highly GPU dependent, and DX12 is coming out soon and will make them even more GPU dependent, even with very weak CPU's. I would only recommend the significant cost increase of the i7 if OP was gonna do serious video editing, animation work, or whatever else like that, but for gaming plus normal stuff it's money wasted.

That was true several years ago, not so much anymore. Take a look at the requirements of some of the newer games that are being released, and some of the massive MMO online games like Star Citizen have some absolutely ridiculous CPU and GPU demands. Also don't forget about Oculus, which is going to be the next evolution in gaming. The CPU and GPU requirements state that the bare minimum for Oculus is going to be an i5-4590 and GTX 970. I would make sure the CPU is solid and capable of running some of the more demanding games and VR before going for the GPU.

It'll still be a good long while before games are using the effective 8 threads on a hyper-threaded i7. A fast DUAL core like the g3258 is still passable for most games, even new games, at 1080p. If the most demanding thing you are doing is gaming, even VR and 1440p or 4k gaming, then a 6600k is above and beyond what you need, especially with DX12 coming out. Games are GPU dependent first and foremost. Even an old i5-2500k is more than fine for games out now. It's the GPU that really determines your performance.

Some games are more CPU dependent like RTS's, compared to other genres, but they are still primarily GPU dependent, not CPU dependent. I can play attilla total war on my q9450 for crying out loud, but only because it's paired with a newer 7850.

A few years ago that was the big debate - i5 vs. i7. You had most people agreeing that the i5 was the way to go and that was the consensus. And the rationale was that games will most likely never use hyper threading and more than 8GB of RAM. That was true. In those days I definitely would have agreed with you. But now we live in an era where massive 500 player+ MMOs and VR technology are a reality. When Oculus released the minimum requirements for the Rift as being an i5-4590 and GTX 970, that literally changed everything, and especially that from a developer perspective. When VR tech matures - especially with the Oculus Rift and the new HEC VR unit, it pretty much will be the start of a new era in what goes into a PC. This is one time where you can't make a PC "future proof" but planning ahead will definitely be rewarded especially with like I said massive MMOs, newer games like Fallout 4, and the next GTA, and VR technology.

Some games are more CPU dependent like RTS's, compared to other genres, but they are still primarily GPU dependent, not CPU dependent. I can play attilla total war on my q9450 for crying out loud, but only because it's paired with a newer 7850.

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I do agree there because some people still game on Core 2 Quads and i7-920s. I used my i7-920 until my motherboard died and I was forced to upgrade to Ivy Bridge. That area I will agree that most games are primarily GPU dependent, but at the same time CPU requirements are changing at a far more rapid pace than you would expect. Fallout 4 wants minimum a i5-760, but recommended is an i5-3570K. That's pretty steep when you think about it.

They've been telling us for years (about 8 years) that Quad core CPU's were the future and we all needed them, but only now are Dual cores being definitively phased out.

Also, Moore's law has slowed considerably in recent years, such that CPU's 8 years from now probably won't be as much better than todays CPUs as todays CPUs are compared to 8 year old CPUs, if you follow.

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Moore's law only follows the number of transistors that appear in a given processor, and that number will change exponentially with each generation of processors. Now the law doesn't specifically state which kind of processor we're talking about. At the time the law was authored, there was only one kind of processor and that was the CPU. And then the CPU also handled the GPU functions. I'm sure that Gordon Moore did not envision the world we live in now where things like VR are very real possibilities, and that the number of transistors in any given processor - be it the CPU or the GPU - are likely to hit the billions when 14nm and 12nm processor manufacturer techniques are widely adopted. Sure, a i5-6600K is much better than the i5-760 that the minimum requirement for Fallout 4 is. But then again, a 10% increase in performance over the previous generation, is still an increase.

the new games are demanding better CPUs than before sure, as you would expect, but nothing approaching a 6600k, let alone a 6700k. We are still talking about the difference between very high end and ultra high end in comparing these skylakes. I speculate that by the time a 6600k is out of date for gaming, including VR and 4k, the rest of either of these systems will be so out of date that it will all need to be replaced. This stuff will all be old by the time games are using hyperthreading.

Oh another question if I may...

Is this Mobo over kill and or out of my budget?

Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

Oh another question if I may...

Is this Mobo over kill and or out of my budget?

Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

No that motherboard is fairly high end and should last a long time.

If the choice is between i5-6600k+980ti and i7-6700k+980, as it seems to be, then of course you know that my opinion is to pick the former. The latter is a combo that will perform worse in everything now and for the next few years, especially 2k, 4k, and VR, just so that a few years from now when you upgrade your GPU your CPU won't bottleneck, except that the 6600k isn't going to bottleneck a GPU in a few years anyway, especially given DX12. Its money spend that won't help you with what you want.

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First off - random benchmarks on Youtube are completely worthless with no regard as to their testing methods, we moderators generally don't take those into account. But how can you say that these will perform worse in games? You don't know, I don't know. Not everybody has the testing methods available to them that they can accurately assess benchmarks. For VR and 4K I personally would get the stronger CPU. You can always add a second GPU later on or upgrade to a newer GPU. A lot of the video benchmarks are really pretty baseless when you think about it.

Money spent on an i7 for gaming is really just a luxury. Just look at those benchmarks I posted earlier. i5 to i7 has a negligible 1-2, if any, fps gain, where 980 to 980ti has a substantial about 10-20 fps gain. It's really a no brainer here.

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We're literally going around in circles here. You say it isn't, I say it is. MMOs will take advantage of i7. Fallout 4, Wolfenstein, and GTA V all take advantage of i7. Those video benchmarks are completely baseless.

First off, go look at the benchmarks again, most of them are not video benchmarks. There are lots of graphs on those links showing real world gaming performance difference across multiple genres of the most challenging modern games, and going to a 980ti from a 980 shows a TEN TIMES performance gain over going to a 6700k from a 6600k. As for 2k and 4k, the 980ti has 6Gb of VRAM instead of 4GB of VRAM in the 980, which is huge in high texture 4k applications, more so than a slightly better CPU.

I never said that those games won't take advantage of i7, they will by getting a few more (like 1-2 more) fps out of it, but it isn't worth it compared to the performance gain per cost you could be getting for a 980ti. The 980 is just not a great price/performance point, it's kind of stuck at being overkill for 1080p and not quite ideal for higher res, and much more expensive than a 970, whereas the 980 ti is basically a TITAN (a $1000 video card) at only 65% of the cost that Nvidia introduced to compete with the latest fury x high end offering from AMD. It's the much better bang for your buck.

You can always add a new or second GPU like you said, but you can also always add a new CPU. The 6700 and 6600 have the same LGA 1151 socket, and can go on the same mobo, and with GPUs in this price range a CPU swap later is actually the cheaper option (assuming you don't mind whipping out the old arctic silver).

One of the big points here is that a i5-6600k+980ti is definitively, inarguably better at just about every gaming application, and by a substantial margin, than a i7-6700k+980 at this moment in time, and will remain that way for the foreseeable future (a couple years at least). There is no game that requires anything close to even 6600k levels of performance from it's CPU for top performance.

You also aren't addressing the DX12 issue, which will, quite soon, within a few years or even sooner, push games much further towards GPU, not CPU, dependence.

If it was a $2000 system then maybe I'd say jump for the i7, but at this price range where you have to choose, there's just no comparison. The 980ti is the better choice over the 6700k.

I encourage you OP to do LOTS of research on the 980 vs 980ti and the 6600 vs 6700 and even other CPUs like the 4690k, and of course on DX12 and on all other relevant issues. Don't just take the advice of some randos on the internet. Make sure that you yourself understand why you are buying what you are buying when you're about to drop 1.5k.

These "randos" are typically hardware enthusiasts who come to Toms Hardware to discuss tech. The majority of the moderators, myself included, are people who not only have been working on and with computers for the majority of their lives but also tend to be in a IT or repair field. They are not some "randos". If anything the YouTube benchmarkers are more "randos" than the people at THF as a lot of them are just people who enjoy gaming and building PCs but might have never even worked in the industry.

Our purpose is to assist people with our knowledge and opinions and if they ask we will tell them based on everything we know.

I personally do not go based on any YouTube benchmarkers results over results from Toms Hardware, Anandtech, TechPower or a multitude of other tech sites that have been doing this since long before YoTube benchmarkers were even around because they use controlled environments to do their testing.