Thanks to you all for your really useful recent posts! Great insights for someone who hasn't had such experience and isn't good enough with PCs to mess around testing out operating systems. Gnome and Kiwi Trader, are there any particularly common apps or utilities that you have in mind? The stuff i use is really mainstream, Office, Explorer, only thing that isn't is really is my trading sw (both xp64 and vitsa compatible) and Snagit (a really useful screenshot tool for those that haven't come across it). Hardwarewise, other than the pc i'll buy, i only have monitors, couple of external harddrives and a printer that i'll want to use - all relatively new and so should be compatible. I'm no techie Sportsguy so unfortunately a self-build isn't an option for me! It must be nice (and really useful) to be able to do that though.
Do it yourself kit: screwdriver, instruction manual, screws, nuts, willingness to research settings on the web. . . and finally just doing one part a week. . . it took me about two weeks to build this configuration, by myself, trying to figure out what's the best way to install each piece, and searching the internet for instructions. . and re reading the manual about 10 times. . . unless you are uncoordinated, and can't read or can't follow directions, you can certainly do it. . . definately not rocket science. . . after I built the first one, and it worked. . . i will never buy a prebuilt one ever again. sportsguy
i was at a BYOC center today, and the prices for high end chips, hard drives and motherboards are so cheap that you can build one, and throw it away and build a second for the price of a pre-built pieces to a great computer CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037 Hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136143 Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131275 Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145194 Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130035 Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371001 Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133056 (can find case for $150 with some searching) DVD SataII: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106073 that's it folks. . . plus Software. . . Raid Capable, redundancy galore, drives and slots galore. . . its very close to my build, but mine is two years old. . . sportsguy
Dell system equivalent as described above, My System Details Intel⢠Core®2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz/1333MHz/6MB L2) 525W Genuine Windows Vista Business Bonus-Windows XP Professional downgrade 3 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 3 Year NBD On-Site Service 256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, Dual Monitor DVI Capable Mini-Tower Chassis Configuration 4GB, 800MHz, DDR2 SDRAM Memory, ECC (2 DIMMS) 16X DVD-ROM with Cyberlink Power DVD⢠C1, All SATA, NO RAID for 1 Hard Drive 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cache⢠No Monitor NTFS File System Resource CD and DVD contains Diagnostics and Driver for Dell Precision Syst $1,748 versus BYOC as described with 4 extra gigs ram and Vista x64 Business, $985 save almost a grand and have fun doing it. . sportsguy
I would not recommend anybody to build his first computer as a trading machine. I have built my trading computer, it is not that difficult... but let's separate business with adventure... there are enough of those in the market. LOL. If you want to see the computer I built, here's my thread: http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118742
What's the thinking on Hewleett Packerd workstations such as xw4600? HP is readily available in Thailand, Dell seems to only service corporate market via corporate channels.
The PC is the tool and the software are the tools of my trade. The system I use is for either trading or forecasting system design, where very large datasets have to get analyzed. They can't build a computer fast enough for me so far. . . . when data sets take 45 minutes to build, i hate having to wait to see the results. . i did a data build on this machine at 15 minutes, on my laptop, same data build, over two hours. . sportsguy
You got your pricing on the Dell Waayyy too high. I checked a similar ready-made with E6850 and 250G HD... $909.