It depends. For in-house software, I can fully understand that wasting a few developer hours less may well be enough to justify buying beefier CPUs for the coup

It depends. For in-house software, I can fully understand that wasting a few developer hours less may well be enough to justify buying beefier CPUs for the couple of users who need them. On the other hand, if thousands of people need better CPUs to load imgur comments (e.g.) instantaneously instead of forcing the browser to a grinding halt for a task that should be essentially trivial, things may look different.