I was worried about this for sure, but I think things worked out for me.
I found a new-in-box 2600k for pretty cheap that I jumped on, and I have it running at 4.7GHz in the exact same setup. In fact I think it could do 5GHz if I would give it a water cooler, I can boot into Windows at 5Ghz (something my 2500k could never do) but the heat just gets too crazy. The process did help me also discover that one of my four ram sticks hated being run at 1600, so I decided to get two sticks of 8GB 1600 RAM to replace them.
I appreciate everyone's advice, I really did consider the 3770k but then I saw that delidding thread and I got scared. I know you don't HAVE TO delid, but I am the kind of guy where if my chip would only hit 4.2GHz or something I would have delided just because it MAYBE could do better. The 2600K I got was cheap enough to push me off of the fence.
Thank you again everyone.