[nspattak]

cpu cost is only a small fraction of overall cost: for every cpu, there is a power supply, ram, motherboard and case. You also haven't mentioned anything about data: do they need local storage or will it be only temporarily stored locally?

it sound like minipcs can be an excellent solution for you.

For how long will you be using this? AWS may be preferable in the short term while local hardware may be cheaper in the long term/a lot of cpu hours.

there is also the question of your application performance on different cpus. there are older servers available for very cheap prices but is it worth it to buy a 12/20core xeon cpu that consumers 200-300W if its performance is similar to a 5900 at 150W ?