This part can vary a lot these days at least, the Ivy/Sandy Bridge xeon chips are still remarkably capable and I can buy a used 11th gen Dell server for a coupl

This part can vary a lot these days at least, the Ivy/Sandy Bridge xeon chips are still remarkably capable and I can buy a used 11th gen Dell server for a couple hundred dollars. Before the Westmere/Nehalam chips it was a different story, but anything newer is going to sip power and perform well as long as you know you’re not getting “all the perf out of it”. It’s entirely possible to make a business out of this, but you rely on a customer base that’s inherently cheap and fussy by nature. Not all of them are, but most looking “for a deal” are cheapskates who will milk you dry in time/labor if you let them and you don’t have the margins to deal with that bullshit.