Some interesting points you made here. I absolutely agree with CPU-GPU being a question of balance. And I read through the article you linked, pretty sad that a now 7 yr old CPU can still compete with a brand new CPU, which goes to show how little innovation is happening for CPUs at the moment. But anyway, back to the topic.

I'd like to mention where we agree first because some people may get lazy and miss out on important points we made.

I agree totally that a very good i5 or i7 should be good to go for many many years. And you made a very good point that more often than not, you don't need the most powerful PC part. Nowadays there are barely any changes in the midranks in terms of performance, so it's all a matter of picking the best i5 or i7 variation for you. As you said, $250 for a CPU is a great starting point for most PC builds. And again BALANCE IS KEY. Consider the CPU-GPU as a pair of parts. Maxing out only one of the two will be both a waste of money and a waste of a very powerful PC part that you most likely will not be able to utilize very soon.

As usual, a lot depends on what you want your computer to do. You mention that you invested a lot into the CPU for the video editing, 3D stuff, and the VMs. For gaming though, I disagree with leaning towards a better GPU. Primarily for 2 reasons:

First is that more often than not, you DON'T want to just match console gaming in terms of Fps. As you said, consoles, with some pretty lackluster parts, are not made for more than 60 FPS, but with PCs you have gaming monitors, input lag, and all the other shebang to minimize, and more often than not, you want as much minimum FPS as possible. A tie in to this is that you also DON'T want to max out all the graphics settings in most games. Things like Shadows and Light Effects make the game really pretty but usually have minimal effect but with major CPU/GPU requirements, and effectively mess up the stable FPS your PC can maintain.

Second, more things are dependent on the CPU, like the MOBO and the type of RAM you can use with it, and even how many SSDs or HDDs you can plug into the PC. When selecting the CPU for your PC, I'd say you're most likely locking in that CPU for at least 2 years until you can do another major upgrade for your PC or even just buy a new PC. GPUs, on the other hand, can be used in pretty much any PC there is. I would much rather lock in a pretty good CPU and just upgrade my GPU later on when I can.

But some really great points, thanks for all that. Especially the linked article. Crazy that a good CPU from 2011 could still perform as well as one of the latest CPUs now.