I know this is absurd; a $99 mobo should suffice. I am driving my nephew up the wall. Life is unfair; he thinks he's the one who should be getting this. I know how that feels. ;-)> <img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1805584">
If you want 45nm processor technology, you could consider an Intel E8400 (or E8500) processor, which actually runs most applications faster than the Q6600 because of higher clock speed -- 3.0 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz. Nearly the same cost. In fact, the E8400 processor is my top choice for 'most' pure trading systems.
Keep the 'photo's coming Tums, I'm really enjoying this. I have my mental map of my dream trading PC - justified of course by the necessity to buy right at the leading edge of the curve coz I will keep it for 3+ years and they will wriite unbelievable bloatware to match new RAM limits, 8MB caches quads etc At some point I am going to build/specify a high end data crunching box that will deal with RT satellite quotes from around 25,000 stocks worldwide, but for now I bought a secondhand Dell P4 for $125 (ex RAM upgrade) as I am only looking at around 3000 or so right now due to banwidth restrictions - the 2GB of RAM were almost as much as the PC
Others may have a different sensibilities, ambient noise, hearing ability, and so on, and that's fine. The 'Nine Hundred' that you refer to is what Antec also calls their 'Ultimate Gamer Case'. The noise produced by that huge 200mm top fan is 24-29 dBA across its range of RPMs (400-800). Because of this fan's position on top, it's typically easier for a person to hear. The four 120mm case fans produce 25-30 dBA of noise across the range of RPMs (1200-2000). The combined noise of the five fans adds up into a bigger sound -- that a person may or may not be able to hear based on ambient noise, hearing ability, PC placement, and so on. The single fan that I spec'd in the second post is significantly quieter. For my trading environment, I prefer my PC not to be something I can hear. In addition, I would be concerned about items/liquid (coffee) accidently getting bumped into that top fan grill. I once knocked a drink onto my case and it's a good thing I didn't have a top fan. This is one reason I don't like the otherwise excellent P182 case. I prefer a smaller case. The smaller the better as long as it cools well and reduces noise. A large case serves no purpose to the trading rigs I have built. Other folks may have a desire to put many drives into their box for whatever reason and may benefit from a large case.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the power supply. An Antec Solo is not a power supply; it's a case; so not sure what you mean by a PC Power & Cooling power supply blowing away an Antec Solo. Perhaps you have relied on some magazine article and not looked up the specs of the actual components suggested in this thread. Anyway, check out the specs for the Corsair HX520 (actually a Seasonic) and you'll see that the Corsair has a very nice circuitry design that automatically enables power sharing between the triple +12V rails in an event of overload on any single +12V rail. The HX520 has an excellent design overall -- no need to worry about multiple rails. The measure of a better power supply is not greater Watts and Amps. First select power supply for the actual power requirements, and then make a decision based on quality measures, design, and so on. For an over-clocked gaming system, the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (their most praised model) would be an excellent choice for many applications. For most trading systems, the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 is over-powered and generates more heat than the Corsair HX520. The Corsair is quieter than the PC Power & Cooling and about equally efficient: The Corsair produces 20 - 35 dBA of noise across its load range (10% to 100%). The PC Power & Cooling generates 26 - 40 dBA of noise across its load range. The Corsair has 84% efficiency at 50% load. The PC Power & Cooling has 83% at an unstated load. Both results are outstanding for power supplies.
Not sure whether trading software spreads info all over the place, but I can say that PerfectDisk is the best defragmenter in my opinion. Even better than O&O and others. One nice feature is that PerfectDisk degfragments system files at boot time -- files that cannot be defrag'd while Windows is running. PerfectDisk defrags NTFS metadata, hibernate, and other special files, which the other programs don't do. You can schedule it to run automatically -- for example, once a week when the market is closed. Fully compatible with Vista. Raxco has a strong reputation of writing applications fully compliant with Microsoft design standards...especially important for a low level utility like this. I found that it generally speeds up bootup. Didn't take the time to measure operational performance -- 'seems' a little faster but I can't say for sure. It's logical that it's faster to read a defragmented file and faster to write to consolidated free space on the drive. If your hard drive crashes (and you don't have a backup), a defrag'd drive would probably be easier for a recovery service to reconstruct. PerfectDisk is part of my standard build.