The E5-2697v4 chips are pretty good perf/$ for used servers. I've seen complete dell servers with 2x E5-2697v4 / 128gb memory for < $500 E5-2697v4 (18-core) p

The E5-2697v4 chips are pretty good perf/$ for used servers. I've seen complete dell servers with 2x E5-2697v4 / 128gb memory for < $500 E5-2697v4 (18-core) passmark is ~20,000 (cpu ~$50 used) current i9-14900k (24-core) passmark is ~60,000 (cpu ~$500)