No need to spend $3K for the one sold at GTT Audio but you'll have to source your own linear power supply and it won't have any of the mods in it but you'll be way ahead of the game for pennies on the dollar.
The mods are in the linear power supply...just to make that clear. I never said they were in the Aruba and neither did Chris. He mods the power supply unit for the Aruba, as far as I know.
he literally says the ground is on the backplane,
That's exactly what I said. Why the need to correct me on that?
and you can see that what he is running his hand over is between the SFPs and the CPU, so he is says the ground is connected to the CPU. That is what he is saying. He likely doesn’t understand what he is saying however.
How you get that from what he said and did explains a lot. Your implications are faulty and intentionally misleading. He's clearly talking about the path from the SFPs to the chip and not the ground. A wave of his hand while mentioning the ground on the backplane and then pointing out the clear paths of the signal doesn't mean he's saying they're related. He talks quickly but I have no problem following what he's saying.
Anyone who's on the fence about this needs only to go back and watch the video and it will be clear what he's talking about.
All the best,
Nonoise