People always tell us how stupid we are to buy Apple. It isn't the hardware it is the software. When you can use an 8 year old machine to run the latest software how expensive is it really?
If you aren't running an SSD startup disk you should, makes the Old Mac Pro run like a new machine. I am using three in mine, one for a startup did and a couple for record and compress disks, makes a huge difference.
The new Mac Minis are dog slow and pretty hard to upgrade. You have to disassemble the entire machine to change out the drive, but you can run from an external SSD through the USB 3 port and make it much much snappier.
I use a PCI card I got from Other World Computing that has two SSD drive slots and 2 external eSATA drives ports. USB cards can be problematic some work until the next upgrade then......
I too have a SSD system drive on a PCIe card & it makes all the difference in the world. I’ve also upgrade the CPU’s once from 2.26 to 2.94. If/when I can find a pair that are faster & 6 core CPU’s I will upgrade them again. These cMP’s are built like tanks & I feel certain mine has many more years of service left it it.
I concur that it is about the software. I get a headache if I have to work in Windows for more than a couple of hours due to the horrible way Windows renders their fonts. Core Audio is hands down better than ASIO.