Tums - your project will be loads of fun but I have to agree with gnome. A gaming-style rig is overkill for trading. Trading is not taxing on a modern CPU at all. It's like buying a new Ford Shelby Mustang with a 450-hp 32-valve V8 and never going over 35mph. My guess for trading is that the performance bottleneck will either be your broker's server or your internet connection. I doubt that enough threads of a dedicated trading computer will be used to justify a dual core CPU. The only high end component that is truly needed are good video cards to drive multiple big monitors. In that case the GPUs will relieve a bunch of the video processing work from the CPU, again making dual core unnecessary. OTOH, there is a benefit to overspecifying a computer besides the fun of building it. You'll get more years of service out of it because it will have enough reserve horsepower to handle future bloatware from Windows, Java, etc. There. I just rationalized your fun project
This is the fun part. Watching all the pieces coming together! EDIT: boxes are empty and unit is together and awesome.
I'm not a big fan of multiple +12v rail power supplies. Besides, I believe that PC Power & Cooling has units that would blow the Corsair or the Antec Solo away. As it is, an 18 amp +12v rail is not a big deal. The 300w power supply in my Dell Vostro-400 comes with an 18 amp +12v rail!
Question: Someone highly recommended a Automatic Disk Defragmentor program http://www.perfectdisk.com/?gclid=CMfrrKrr3ZECFQJEPAodgiZPgA He said that charting and trading software programs are notorious for spreading info all over the place and this software makes a big difference to performance. True or False?
It takes LOTS of fragmenting to have a noticeable impact on XP. I've had PerfectDisk for years, and in spite of its marketing claims, I find no better performance with it than with the one included in XP... a version of DiskKeeper Lite.
I knew this would be an overkill. ;-) Like I said in my first post, if you didn't know it, you would think I was building a gaming machine. What the heck, life is short. I have reached a point in my life where I have to stop dreaming my dreams and to start living them. If I were to build a machine, I want to build a dream machine.