Buying a Stripped Down Mac Pro?

[15aax]

hey,

First time poster, be nice to me.

I've decided to get a mac pro. My 24" iMac is showing it's age and I'm looking for more ports, want to add an eSATA card, stuff like that.

Here's the thing. I have some internal hard drives and a nice firewire external DVD burner. Plus a friend just said he'd sell me a nice GPU and some RAM super cheap cause he owes me a favor.

I have a budget so I've been looking around at fairly-new used machines and I even considered building a hackintosh but i think that's not quite my speed.

What I want to know is: Is there any way I could buy a Mac Pro with no GPU, no HDs, no RAM and no optical drive and save a few bucks?

It seems silly to pay for a bunch of parts that I won't be using. I know I could just try to sell them later but it seems like a hassle. I also don't know, if i could get a "bare" machine, if it would be any cheaper.

I was thinking, maybe there were Mac service techs who would sell a stripped down Mac Pro.

I don't know. I've been searching around the internets for a while and havn't found anything yet. I figured this was a good place to ask.

thanks,
I

 

[SmilesLots]

If you look around, such a beast may be available, just not plentiful. As to the graphics card, be sure it is Mac compatible. If it comes from a pc, the firmware will likely have to be reconfigured for a Mac, or whatever "they" do here for such things. Lots of threads on that. Not much on empty Pros to my knowledge.

 

[rmwebs]

I'm in the market for a Pro too (also moving from an aging 24" iMac). From my understanding, you can only use specific graphics cards on the Pro. You may be able to pick up a spares/repairs from eBay and pt your HDD and such in there.

Alternatively, just buy a second hand model. I looked at some 08 models and they were fairly reasonable.

I'm sure a Pro owner will be able to respond and shed some light of the GFX card. Oh, and welcome to MacRumors!