There are many videos and guides explaining how to turn an old office PC into an affordable gaming machine. But their cases are small, PSU weak, cooling sucks and forget about high amount of RAM... In my opinion a workstation solves most of those problems. I've bought used/refurbished Dell Precision T3600 for $180 - E5-1620 (4c/8t @ 3,60 GHz), 4 GB ECC RAM, 685W PSU. It's main advantages are:

• CPU performance +/- just as good as highest end 3-4rd gen i7 AND can be upgraded to 6 or 8 core Xeon

• Takes almost any GPU. From GT 710 to RTX 2080

• ECC RAM is cheap as hell, 64 GB will cost you less than 16 GB non-ECC DDR4

• Build quality and QoL stuff like hot swappable PSU or tool less installation

And it still costs less than a current gen Ryzen 5/i5 with an ok motherboard!

Do you need even more performance? There are dual CPU models like T5600 or HP Z620
Cheaper? Xeon X based workstations often cost less than $100

I'm looking for a solid machine that I can use for homelab, dual/triple booting operating systems, and running virtual machines.

I could of course build something from scratch but I think I could get much better value looking at older refurbished workstations. I'm not a big gamer but some of these systems include pro quadro cards anyway which would be more than adequate and better than most new budget graphics cards.

So far I think the Precision 5820 looks like a possible option and I've seen some for fairly cheap prices. It seems to be new enough that it has all the important features like support for M.2, USB 3.1, and ddr4. I really like the flex bay design that allows for four hot swap drives. Is the Linux support good? What is the repairability and noise like?

Are there any other models worth considering?