My bad. RAID 1 is the mirrored version. Gotta have the backup. Too much hassle to rebuild after a crash.
Thanks for your comments and feedback. Skepticism is a good thing in a scientific sense. Keeping in mind that blind skepticism becomes ignorance pretty quickly, so try it yourself and you will no longer 'fail to see.' The advantage of actually building and testing these systems is that you see what really works vs. reading other people's thoughts in PC Magazine or whatever. As it turns out, a fanless Skythe Ninja heat sink, in the specific overall configuration I describe, performs similarly to the stock Intel heat sink fan, measured under maximum load using the Intel Thermal Analysis Tool. In other configurations, the result may be different. Some factors of this particular config that reduce heat: The 45nm quad processor technology runs about 30% cooler than 65nm quad processor technology under maximum load and 50% cooler at idle. The Shin-Etsu thermal interface material transfers heat better than the stock material. There is only 1 hard drive and 1 optical drive in this system -- a minimal configuration with low component heat generation. The 'Corsair' power supply is actually designed and made by Seasonic. Seasonic make the highest performing, silent power supplies. The 'Corsair' branded model is actually a slight improvement over the Seasonic branded models. The Antec Solo case has a very efficient cooling design. The power supply fan is positioned right above the processor heat sink, which helps cool it. The case fan is right beside the processor heat sink as well. If you end up building one of these, send me a PM if you like and I'll share some build notes, etc.
The original post described an 'extreme gamers' objective...otherwise, I pretty much agree. The E8400 processor would be my first choice for most pure trading systems. A trader might well consider a Quad core if his trading software takes advantage of multiple processors (e.g. MultiCharts) and there is a need for it -- lots of back testing, significant real time analysis, or many real time tick charts. The Antec P182 case is outstanding and my strong second choice. I have used P180/P182s in the past. The Solo has a better thermal design, a quieter design, and a smaller footprint/form factor.
I have used and tested SpeedFan, but I don't like it on a trading machine because it loads its drivers at each startup. I noticed conflicts caused by (or that didn't exist prior to) the SpeedFan drivers on a fresh install.
The D5400XS (Skulltrail) is a very nice mobo. This board would appeal to the (rare) trader who truly could benefit from dual CPU capability that provides up to 8 core processing. The D5400XS has a fan on the motherboard, which takes it out of the running for my own 'silent' requirements. It is also an extended ATX (eATX) form factor, which may not fit certain cases. DDR2 memory instead of DDR3 is technically a little lower performing, but nothing that a typical trader would notice. Four PCIe x16 slots is nice for multi-monitor trading.
4 PCIE x16 slots is OVERKILL, i hope you are joking. I ran 6 screens in windows 200k pro box with a dual AGP and 2 PCi dual head cards with zero problems, the box is still alive today but in in closet as a reserve. A motherboard with 2 pciex16 slots and 3 pcix1 slots will handle anything you can throw at it......in my case of the new one just completed it has x16 slot, another called x16 slot but is actually a x4 slot and..........IF a x16 second card is installed in the so called second x16 slot the 3 slots for PCIX1 are null and void. How much juice would a 4 slot x16 require? .. :eek: What the fan companies and or heatsink companies advertise might not be as good as you claim, it is your box so do as you wish................but be forewarned a single fan at low speed is gonna be trouble.......we all know fans at lower speeds have less CFM of air push but are quiet. BUT, how quiet is a death nail to your setup? I play on the safe side. YOU?
Putting two drives into a RAID 1 mirror set is an excellent fault tolerance option. As a side effect, you get a slight performance increase for reads and a slight performance decrease for writes. Plus a little extra heat and noise output. For backup, would recommend Iomega 70GB REV drives/disks. These are essentially very small (fit in shirt pocket) removeable hard drives. The advantage of an Iomega REV drive over an internal backup hard drive is that the REV drives are removeable and can be stored offsite or in a fire proof safe. The advantage of REV drives over tape is that the REV drives perform relatively fast file reads and writes -- random access instead of sequential. The removeable drive can be setup to be bootable with the backup software and data already on it -- a very small, self-contained disaster recovery solution. It appears to your system as an optical drive.