Hi Doc.

I'll bet a generation or two before that it was the fastest horse, best breeding, stamina, and rough trail traversal.

But I get your point.
W_A_N, the systems you're familiar with get an honorable mention in the following article.
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-motherboards-designed-for-high-performance-computingMFM, I found a good one for you. I'd still recommend server / enterprise level hardware if you are doing a production build rather than a hobby build - especially the motherboard.
http://www.logicalincrements.com/articles/videoediting/ &
https://turbofuture.com/computers/Build-Photo-Editing-PCCheck the comments on these pages too. There are additional tricks listed.
For example, I like this guy, and he is correct if you use the XEONs he mentions. ( If you are considering this, you're not the first as X58 Chipset components seem to be drying up.)
" Ryan 19 months ago
Consider going back in time to the x56.. Processors with the lga1366/socket Asus server mother board. 1. You can practically blow any I7 out of the water with two x5680s for $300 and you'll have more pcie slots to play with. Having DDR4 would be nice, but it's not a practical option, and probably won't be, for a while for budget workstations. "
^^^^ To avoid confusion, the lga 1366 motherboard socket uses an X58 chipset. His mention of x56.. refers to the intel XEON CPU designation e.g. x5670, x5680, x5690, etc.. x=power draw (L would be low power) the 56 is a hexa-core (12 w/ hyperthreading) if it were 55 it would be a quad-core (8 w/ HT) The 55's have an 8MB cache whereas the 56 has 12. (Level-3)
Another tip on XEONs, stick with the ones that end in a 0. The specs are different with the interim numbered chips. Ex. Choice between x5674 and an x5670. pick x5670 unless they are the same price and check to see if the additional power draw is worth the minimal computational gain. most times it's not. Those are special purpose chips and you need to check the specs.
Here's a handy-dandy CPU comparison chart w/ hyperlinks to take you to the specs.
https://cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5670+%40+2.93GHz&id=1307