You could always do what I did. Buy a part here and buy a part there and next thing you know, you have a $2000 pc that is barely ever used. I went from windows 7 to windows 8.1 and its really not that bad. It is geared more towards the touch screen/tablet market, but after about two weeks, its easy and fluid to use. As for CPU's, AMD will give you the most performance for your dollar. The only time its good to buy an intel CPU is if you are going to need to use a TON of single thread applications or if you can find one on a sale. Micro center has some killer deals for the i5's and i7's, but the nearest store is in atlanta and I cannot bring myself to drive that far.
I am currently using a overclocked AMD FX 8350 CPU on a asrock extreme 9 motherboard with 16 gigs of ram, the CPU is cooled by a NZXT kraken X60 liquid CPU cooler. I have my operating system on a samsung 840 solid state drive and using a seagate barracuda 1tb hard drive for my storage. The graphics are handled by a AMD R9 290 and its all powered by a 750w power supply. I bought each and everyone of those parts on a sale. If you are willing to way and build one yourself, you can save quite a bit of money and get way more bang for your buck.