If you would like to be inspired: buy a copy of "The Workbench Book" by Scott Landis.
It shows some truly beautiful workbenches - but it's focused on woodworking benches. Depending on your intended use for the bench, building your own may, or may not, be practical. For woodworking, a good bench is a must. The top serves as a reference for construction, it must be perfectly flat for the work to be flat and square. The integral vises allow a variety of clamping for work on the wood (planing, sanding, etc.) and so, purchasing a good bench as a foundation is a reasonable option. The weight stabilizes the bench (and work) against the heavy action of planing and sawing. There are many European benches made of beech that are very good. They are also very expensive. Here is a moderately priced woodworking bench:
https://www.highlandwoodworking.com/premium-european-workbench.aspx
For a general purpose bench, a wood top is a nice touch. Buy or build the frame, be it steel or wood, and use a top as you describe.
A proper woodworking bench is a different animal. It must be strong, flat, and have built in methods for clamping. I would prefer a face vise and a tail vise. Tools required to build a good bench include Jointer ("joints" or flattens your boards, creating true surface) and a Planer (really should be called a "thicknesser" because that's all it does, the reference plane of the wood is created by the jointer). While you can do both of those tasks with hand tools, quality hand tools aren't cheap, and it takes a lot of work to develop the skill to build a proper bench top.
I've built several workbenches. Some live on in my brother's basement. The first one that I ever built had a sturdy base, with 8 4x4 posts and 2x4 framing elements. The top was made of 2x4 laid on edge, so, 3 1/2" thick. The plans came from a library book... and I'm not convinced that the author ever built one... But, that 2x4 top served as a great way to learn how to really flatten a top with a jointer plane (Stanley no.7) So many mistakes...but subsequent benches were better.
For expediency's sake, when I moved into this house ten years ago, I bought a Sjobergs bench. Good quality, two end vises, and I added a face vise. It's served me well in several projects, but I would call it a mid-level bench of medium size. I will need a much larger workspace to build the next bench, a project that will reflect the benches in the book I mentioned above.