If your tasks are interruptible and can occasionally fail, this possible, however you have to be very careful with the capital outlays - being stuck with old, u

If your tasks are interruptible and can occasionally fail, this possible, however you have to be very careful with the capital outlays - being stuck with old, unsupported hardware is not good, nor is the human effort required to maintain such a system very cheap. You would be effectively running a data centre that has a particularly good tolerance for occasional downtime, but it still would be a data centre to operate nevertheless.