I may have the opportunity to pickup a early 2008 3,1 Mac Pro A1186 for around $200 USD. It’s an “8” core model, x2 E5472 (3.0 GHz) Problem is, there is a slight issue and it’s the reason why it’s being sold. Power LED blinks and no boot, no image on screen. Not being there to test it out myself i’m looking around to see what could cause it to not boot and throw a blinking power light. Looks to be ranging from RAM, to GPU or CPU issues. Is it worth buying to fix, and keep around? Looking average price for these in working condition/fair cosmetic condition is $600-800+. Any thoughts?
I bought mine for $900 bucks about a year ago, but mine was a 12 core model, so your prices sound about right. Not sure what the problem actually is, but I will say that if it does end up being a GPU, if it has the standard one, you will need to upgrade it anyways. The GPU's in Macs seems to always be their weak point by a long shot. Mine came with dual Radeon HD 5770's and running them in Crossfire mode they barely stack up to a modern $100 card. I need to upgrade mine but just don't know which one to get. Keep that in mind though, the graphics card upgrade is going to be a must whether it is broken or not.
Regarding the LED Thing, you should be able to find a page of what the blinking LED means by searching on google you just need to know how often in a row it does before it does a short break and then repeats it and would you ber able to figure out if it also beeps and if it does beep you should look at this https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202768 and maybe this https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1547
