I had a massive Trinitron before these but no, a Samsung 204B is nothing like those glorious old CRTs. A 204B is old tech LCD now, not that great really, but functional.
I went the 4K route. I initially wanted a 40 inch 4K but settled for 32 inch. I'd recommend to get a single 40K display. You'll have the screen real estate of 4 24" monitors at 1080p side by side plus some extra space on top and bottom.
You can probably use it without scaling so high dpi compatibility won't be a problem.
Once you went the 4K way every other DPI resolution looks awful. I had a private 4K monitor and got a company laptop update and a new monitor at the office. I first thought what the heck can't the IT department get their video drives right on a fresh install until I realized that unsharp resolution just is the native pixel densitiy of the display.
So in order to get crisp DPIs, 32'' with fractional scaling might still make sense. At least to me, it's like reading crisp sharp paper online.
Not sure how you arrived at the 40" number, but I tried this when shopping for a new screen and could not stand the head movement needed to handle that size, as well as the geometry distortion due to the flatness. 32" ended up the sweet spot for me. Maybe a highly curved 40" 4K would work better? That I haven't tried yet.
Hellzyeah! Where can I get one of those bad boys? And how many arms and legs plus first born children are needed to give up to get one of those mythical beasts?
Can't decide if you mean 40" display or 4K display? Or did you combine 40" + 4k into 40k?
I do sunburn far easier than I'd like though! :-P