Some people uses Raspberry Pis or an old desktop computers to make a cluster.
Either You trade power for watts or you trade watts for power.
I came across Asahi Linux. I think it opens possibilities to have 600$ powerful computers running on m1 using very low power. Using it as a single instance or a cluster.
What do you think ? What is your feeling about it ? :)
You also could go the used mini PC route. HP EliteDesk 800 G3 mini for 100 bucks has a 35W CPU and uses very little power. When IDLE almost in an M1 ball park and even in Full Usage it wouldn’t exceed M1 by much. And you got x86_64 architecture which in some instances can be way more compatible with software than M1 aarch64 although it’s on a rise.