Good dev board to build a cpu?

Hey everyone i am a EE student and last semester i had a fpga design course wich was a lot of fun. We used some xylinx dev board that cost about 300€ and i dont really want to spend that much money right now. I would love to design a little cpu, not shure yet if i want to implement the risc instruction set or just wing it but i dont have a fixed set of requirements yet. Would you design your own board with a mcu for programming, the fpga and maybe dram or would you get a dev board? Does someone know a good dev board that does not break the bank? With the xylinx board i obviusly worked with vivado, how are the tools of alterra or others in comparison in your opinion? Thanks for your input!