Used Workstation Or Build New?

Hardware Build a PC
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My current Phenom II X4 965 machine is starting to get a little long in the tooth (just a little, ha!) and is starting to have some hardware stability issues. I’m looking to upgrade, and since I’m quite out of date I’m looking for advice on what would be a “good value” type workstation in 2020.

My general use cases for this PC are SW development, including a fair bit of embedded development, occasional “scientific” computing tasks with things like Numpy and Julia, and very occasionally playing Factorio. I run NixOS, so probably the highest stress thing is when I try and run some software that isn’t in a binary cache which triggers a big build. Other than that, typical use is web browsing and general office/email work. I have dual 1080p DVI displays which I would like to continue to drive for now, but I have been interested in possibly upgrading to an ultrawide in the future. Having the option to do VFIO passthrough in the future (for windows CAD) would be a “nice to have” feature.

I’m hoping to spend in the neighborhood of $600 dollars (USD, I’m in USA), but if there was a really compelling reason I might be convinced to spend as much as 1k. At my target price point does it make more sense to go for a new Ryzen build or find a used HP Z series or Dell T series workstation? Are there other options I should consider? Thoughts are appreciated!

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Prices are crazy at the moment so if new I would go for b450 (msi tomahawk max?) and ryzen 2600 or maybe 2700x. Then upgrade later to 5xxx. It will be at least 4-5 times faster than your current Phenom. And you can put NVME into this, should give considerable boost for compilation and small I/O.
B450 isn’t best for VFIO but people got it working.

But you may find used bargain TR1, or something lga2066 based.
And cheapest probably would be used r7-2700x or i7-9700.

But of course used stuff depends mainly on your luck.

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How much stuff, do you have as carry-over? [PSU, Case, etc.]
450 chipset boards, can be had for cheep [esp. some mATX variants]. + throw in future BIOS updates, to accommodate Ryzen 5000 series chip usability. Can always grab likes of R5 1600/1600AF/2600, as a solid base [+ inc. HS], before chasing down anything more aggressively spec’d
X399 has a massive amount of computing / peripheral / PCIe capacity, BUT, is effectively at EOL [Uses TR Gen1/2 chips]. Most mainboards are relatively cheap, but may have limitations [CPU Power limits, reduced X16 slots for other sized PCIe slots, etc].

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