At the very least he should have used a Xeon E3 to get ECC support, but even that wouldn't be directly comparable. The Xeon E5 and E7 processors have a ton more I/O bandwidth than the desktop platform. The new Mac Pro will actually be able to run 2 GPUs and several Thunderbolt ports without bandwidth starvation, but no system based around LGA1155 or LGA1150 can. Also, the server platform has quad-channel memory, compared to dual-channel on the desktop platform.

Workstation parts are expensive, yes, but they do offer capabilities that you can't get from consumer parts. If you don't need a workstation, then workstations may seem ridiculously overpriced, but if you do need a workstation, then ordinary desktops are crippled unreliable crap.