Hard to say without real workloads, but if there are any plans of routinely pegging the CPU, most power efficient strategy is to buy a modern chip.
I do agree that modern CPUs are required for high-load situations.
What you probably want to compare for most home uses is power at some low idle vs performance at that CPU throttle level. The difference is probably a Watt or two max, which never would justify a brand new SBC over repurposing something headed to ewaste for environmental reasons.
Average consumption matters, not peak. And you can pin CPU to not go on higher frequencies if you don't want to go into inefficient max frequency/max voltage region.
You will also be recycling already produced device.
Recycling is good, but only to a point. At some point the cost of operation (and resource pressure from its use) will exceed the cost of a more efficient device - at least until we get abundant green power...
An orange pi 5 uses 7.5W under full load, 3.3W idle in comparison.