From my experiences, moster servers (or as you put it "extreme OEM desktop") are used for mostly high stream servers, like internet radio stations or streaming video (large files being transfered all the time). Obviously, lots of disk space to hold these larges files, and lots of ram to handle faster i/o times (etc). Rack servers (simple 1/2U units with < 4g ram) are great for the smaller stuff.
But, I could be wrong. I've just always seen this and is how I setup my servers. I have about 10 rack servers all doing different small jobs (irc server, email server, non-streaming web server, etc etc). And I have two monster servers (FTP file server, and a streaming video/audio server).
Hope I helped, even though I really didn't... lol!
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