@mary We bought a 512GB, 112-CPU machine to be our main login server, for Reasons. Physically it is such an innocent little thin server ('1U'), you would never guess what's inside. It's not even maxed out on memory, I think you can get 2TB into one. And they feel surprisingly inexpensive for such a powerful machine (ie, we can afford them).
(I work in a Canadian university's computer science department.)