The trick is to buy refurbished used blades.  Large enterprises need to keep up with the most recent processors to remain energy-cost efficient.  They sell off the three-year olds.  But there isn't a big market of buyers for used blades, so the cost is a mere fraction of what it would cost to buy new.  Also, the cost is much less than buying a desktop/workstation with equivalent dual-Xeon processor pack and RAM.  Third, the blades use much less electricity because they don't have sound cards and multiple video cards or speakers - just a minimal onboard video chip to drive a (shared) monitor.  Whereas my workstation Cameron draws 752W when running hard, each blade draws 275W but has the same core count.  Finally, the blades are space efficient;  look at that rack with eleven blades in it, and imagine how much desk space would be needed for eleven desktop/workstations.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5