I've looked into this kind of thing in the past, but there was always something that made me shy away, despite the prices being relatively favorable.<p>Most of the time, I think it was a worry of "if the power supply dies" - because usually, these workstations have a very proprietary PSU, which can sometimes be difficult to source, and when you find one, the price can be nothing short of insane.<p>Then there was RAM - most of the time, you needed ECC RAM, and that stuff could be expensive if you wanted to push the system to its maximum config. Of course, this was years ago, maybe things have changed in the market?<p>Last was the potential noise and heat factors. I once had a Core2Duo that I dropped in a 8800 GTX (or something like that) - and while the noise wasn't bothersome, the heat output was something else. But I do know what a server fan system sounds like, and I'd worry about a workstation having that same kind of jet-engine experience.<p>So I never pulled the trigger, so to speak.<p>Today, I've been almost going the direct opposite direction.<p>I've got on my "list of things to repair/build" a TRS-80 Model 100 (portable), an old Toughbook C29 to refresh, and I'm contemplating building a custom "cyberdeck", using a variety of different parts and components (probably an ESP-32 coupled to an Arduino Nano, with the Nano acting as a keyboard interface, because the keyboard isn't off-the-shelf, it's from a toy computer, the ESP will probably drive some kind of GLCD, then custom firmware, etc for everything else - not really a practical system, but probably more fun).