AVID hardware question

Hi,

I'm and AVID newbie so apologies if any of this does not make sense but I have been asked to provide some IT support for a production company using the system. Their old AVID system (an HP XW8000) recently fried (motherboard and power supply are both dead, I've not tested any other components) and they replaced it with a new system.

I investigated replacing the components in the old system to rebuild it for backup purposes (ie if the main system fails) but it wasn't really cost effective (particularly if other compnents such as the processors and memory are also fried). My understanding from them is that most of the heavy duty processing is done by the adrenaline box so my question is:

Would it be feasable to rebuild the old system cheaply using a single Core 2 Duo motherboard / processor combo purely to keep as a backup for the main system in case it fails in the mjiddle of an edit? I'm not looking to rebuild it as an operational machine, merely something which would be usable until the main system could be repaired / replaced in an emergency.

Any help / advice on things to watch out for would be appreciated.