IMac Motherboard Power Supply

My just pre-iSight PPC iMac has a toasted motherboard and power supply - according to my Apple Tech. It still boots once in a while. Any suggestions on how to source parts cheaply ($700 quoted is more than it's worth). It's still worked okay and has a lot of apps/data on it. Thanks!

Honestly, your best bet is to buy a new computer. You will almost certainly pay more for replacement parts than you will for a new computer, especially if you need to pay someone to install the parts too.

Computer parts follow a parabolic price curve, when they are brand new they cost a lot because they are cutting edge and there are not a lot of them, as they propagate through the market they drop in price until about mid-way through their life when they are at their cheapest point. As they age they increase in price again because they are no longer being produced and as they fail there are fewer and fewer of them. Some computer parts like memory and probably your power supply are common enough that they become commodities, at which point they are pretty cheap for a long time. However, a part like your motherboard is only produced for a short period of time and will probably be difficult to find and expensive to purchase.

If you want a similar computer to the one that died try E-Bay.

Regardless of which option you choose you can still recover your data from your old hard drive, although since your old computer was PPC based you might not be able to use your apps unless you get another old PPC machine.

But I wanted to salvage the machine if possible - sounds like it isn't .