Need a render slave. What's the best/cheaper option? Server Blade or custom machine?

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Hi guys! or girls!

I’m having a conundrum.

Context:
My mac (2011, i7, amd 6750 1gb, 16gb ram) is going on is last breath, in the matter of making renders. He is still a monster on the other aspects. The tin welding on the GPU is a apple known problem on the 2011 generation. Which is a great problem for me. The constant renders heat up the board that make the tin melt and disconnect the GPU. Solution? New board. That’s expensive.
Before some of you start on the apple windows war, know that I just prefer my apple laptop, and that’s not a discussion.

The question:
Since i don’t want to change my machine, because is still in very good condition (and apple laptops are expensive as f*$), I was thinking on buying a server blade that can do my personal renders. But I started digging up and came to a conundrum in which I just can’t see what is the best option. Assembling a machine (maybe less energy consuming but less processing power) or buying a server blade (assembling one I mean, because I work in a tech company and they can help me on getting the parts).

Any thoughts?

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I don’t think using a laptop for rendering for a prolonged period of time is a good idea no matter the brand. Manufacturers speculate that people aren’t going to do things like that, they design and build accordingly.

It all depends on what prices you get, you may find some good deals on somewhat modern second-hand dual-socket Xeons (26xx series) with tons of DDR3 ram on ebay, for example. Otherwise, I don’t think you’re getting any value out of using server hardware.

If you want the best value in a single machine, you should probably get one of those new AMD Threadripper systems. Such a system is easily built with readily available parts (I doubt your company gets significantly better prices than consumer retail) and you don’t need a rack for it. You can also put in consumer GPUs without problem.