I almost went down this sort of road and went 3900x instead. I think the one non-replicated benefit of the older server route is cheap & large amounts of ECC r

I almost went down this sort of road and went 3900x instead. I think the one non-replicated benefit of the older server route is cheap & large amounts of ECC ram, but you're also getting slower ddr3 ram which is why the pricing works out the way it does. I was in that same pricing ballpark with a new-build ryzen with a 2070 super, I think you could make it pretty much equivalent but maybe trading 64gb of fast ddr4 ram for the 128gb of ddr3. As long as you can "make by" with 24 cpu threads I think you'll be in a much better position at same-ish cost but with new / full warranty components but that's just my math :-).