I purposely stayed away from certain Corsair/Seasonic models due to reports of coil whine (the ones that often get discounted, unsurprisingly). My previous build had it, my current one uses a lower model Seasonic that's whine-free.

The new cards are out, any thoughts?

I'm kinda debating with myself what to do now and what would be best future-proof upgrade path (yeh, sounds funny):
1) to go PG278Q and 980 SLI;
2) to go PG278Q and 970 SLI;
3) PG278Q and single 970 (is it even worth it);
4) wait for Broadwell/Skylake and Pascal (oh boya).

Do i go all-in and go for the 1st variant, wait for non-reference 980 cards and then overclock it on water. Or do i do the same but with references and on air in open case.
Do i go for the 2nd variant with either water or air and wait on that setup till the big Maxwell arrives to upgrade.
Kinda the same with the 3rd, just a pit stop rig while waiting for GM200 based cards. The wait could be either short (late '14/H1 '15) or as late as spring season '15.
4th is more of a joke. Or not. Guess the main question do i spent money now or wait again (at least till GM200 release, whenever it'll be). And do i spent big time or not.

Kinda regret i kept reading OCN for last 2 weeks while waiting for new 900 series. So much interesting stuff yet so limited time and finances. Itching for upgrade doesn't help.

IIRC, the reference cooler on recent high-end Nvidia's have been serviceable according to reviews. I'd personally shoot for non-reference as well, my Gigabyte Windforce GTX 670 has being pretty reliable these past 2+ years in a hot room. My PS3 and 360 are both significantly louder than my tower.

I won't upgrade until my card dies or I can't play console ports at 720p/30fps/medium settings. I only just bought a 1080p monitor this year.

If I remember correctly, you wanted to follow my path with open case so you would probably do aftermarket aircooling for the GPU anyway. Typically reference coolers blow (pun intended), but with aftermarket cooling it wouldn't matter. Watch the OCN threads and see which cards tend to OC highest (usually the one with the most robust VRMs) and go for that one. Then once you get it, ditch the crap stock cooler (stock or custom still suck compared to aftermarket).

Prolimatech MK-26 or Raijintek Morpheus with Noctua NF-S12A PWM or Be Quiet! Silent Wings 2 PWM.

Nothing new is coming out within the next month so start looking at the other parts. I guess you have to decide between 4790K or 5820K.