My 2006 Mac Pro went "dead" back in June 2013, and no matter I did to try and diagnose why, everything seemed to point to the mother board being bad. So, I went ahead and purchased a late 2012 Mac Mini, so that I could still use my keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Everything has worked out great for that. I also took out the internal hard drive and DVD drive that was in the Mac Pro, and I have been using them ever since (purchased external cases for each of those devices).