I wouldn't send an 8-year-old computer in for a repair, but a quick visit to ifixit.com might give you the guidance you need to fix it yourself. Getting the parts for Apple computers is often more of a challenge as Apple doesn't typically supply them and you're relegated to buying parts either salvaged from scrap computers or unauthorized parts. It makes the repair costs for Apple computers much higher. To fix a broken Mac you typically have to have a comparable working Mac to steal parts from. Used Macs retain their value somewhat because of this as those trying to fix them need the parts. Apple is now putting digital serial numbers into parts also that the computer has to read and verify they're authentic before they'll work. This has created a whole new class of tools that can read the serial numbers off of the broken part and insert it into the new part.
Automatic backups to the cloud are handy for photos and documents. I automatically back up photos to the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds and documents go to Google and Microsoft.clouds. Word has an autosave feature that does a very nice job.
Figuring out the problem is the first big hiccup. In a perfect world it's something simple like a power cable. (In the PC world a whole lot of "dead" computers are dead because someone hit the power switch on the back of the computer's power supply unit disabling the power supply without knowing it. Every computer tech in the world knows to look for that first when a "dead" computer is presented to them.) If you've got it plugged into a power strip or UPS/surge protector, checking it in a different outlet is always wise. Those can fail. I would seriously doubt it's the hard drive. A computer will generally POST (power-on self-test) even with no hard drive. When a computer is totally dead, the power supply is typically a good bet. It could be a motherboard, but it wouldn't be my first suspect.
If the hard drive was spinning up and the fans were working, I'd think the video card could be the issue. There's a brain-dead computer "expert" on YouTube who wasted way too much of my time as he spent hours (literally) troubleshooting a computer that had no video output but everything else worked. The case fans worked, the CPU cooler worked, the hard drives spun up and worked. His first step was the check and replace the memory. Uh, no. He then replaced the CMOS battery on the motherboard. Uh, no again. A computer will POST even without memory. It'll fail the POST as there's no memory, but it will POST. And the CMOS battery simply stores the BIOS settings and runs the computer's clock. It has nothing to do with the video out. He then refreshed the BIOS. Once again, the BIOS would not cause the issue he was supposedly troubleshooting. I was screaming at my TV by now. "It's the video card or the video card slot, you moron!" It was the video card slot. The PCIe slots tend to be a tad fragile and this one arrived with the hold-down clip of the slot already dislodged which should have been one heck of a clue to him, but no. It took over four hours for him to figure it out, but eventually, he did. The cheap and easy solution was to just move the video card to another PCIe slot on the motherboard, but instead, he replaced the motherboard and was thrilled that he could save the customer's computer. Yeah. It was a job that should have taken all of ten minutes and cost nothing. He made it into a marathon of how not to troubleshoot a computer.
In your case, assuming you have good power to the computer, my money would be on the power supply. Older Apple motherboards were generally fairly reliable. (Newer ones are not nearly as reliable.) It could be the CPU. Most CPUs have an effective life of 3-4 years before they're outdated. CPU's that are on 24 hours a day and under a load have a lifespan of about 8-10 years. The typical home used CPU should survive 20-30 years before it dies. That's assuming it's only on for a few hours a day and not under a load 24/7. If I had to bet, I'd say the power supply was the issue. Is it worth fixing it in an eight-year-old computer? That's something you have to decide.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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