boli, How did you decide on 12 gig ram? What was the rational for deciding that would be the appropriate amount for this machine?
It maybe my bad assumption... that "more RAM is always better". I decided on the spot at the store to go with 12GB anyway because: 1. Memory is not that expensive (to me anyway) these days. $150 for 6GB. I decided to ramp up the ram (pon intended) to see how it goes. 2. I can always use the extra RAM on my other computers. Looking back, boxes these days usually come with 4GB to 6GB. Maybe a 6GB would be sufficient. That would save the cost of this box by $150.
Since the last post was deleted let me rephrase: A PC that you have built for trading is as smart as delivering pizza in a Ferrari. it makes no sense and is a waste of money. There is no need for 12 GB of RAM no matter what you trade. BTW When I typed 6 I was feeling generous.
Really its not worth building your own computer unless its your hobby. For example, if you are buying a PC and wait for a good deal, sometimes they will throw in the monitor in for free. For support, I had a Dell Vostro 1510 Laptop with 1 year warranty, however the Nivida video card crashed on me in the 2nd year. The good news is that this card was being recalled for defects so warranty was extended. I did have to talk to a Dell manager to get this all resolved, however, assuming my laptop does arrive in the next 2 weeks, since they no longer make the 1510 laptops, they are giving me a newer model laptop. It comes with Windows 7 pro vs old one came with Vista Pro It comes with Intel I3 where old one came with Intel dual core 350 GB HD vs 160 GB 512 ATI video card vs Nvidia 256 4 GB RAM both old and new had this I believe. So a brand new laptop with better specs, something you are not going to get if you build a computer yourself. It should run NT ver 7 with no problems.
If you were making a point in stating 12GB memory is a waste on a trading computer, why didn't you say so directly and to the point. Even that would be a minor factor in building a new PC. I may have overspent $150 on buying memory. Big deal. This thread is about showing someone it is easy to build a trading computer. At least I didn't drop $6799 to buy something comparable with a SSD: http://www.digitaltigers.com/traderstation-commandcenterelite.asp If you have a point to make, make it. By stating "when the market is done with you in at least 6 months, may be you can take your PC apart and put it back together" and similar derogatory remarks.... all that you wanted to do is to put people down to make yourself feel big.
just posted a special EMC is running at http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195937 - just a FYI
Buy http://ia351407.us.archive.org/0/items/uploaded/brewster-IA_DATACENTER.jpg?cnt=0 http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=243665
seriously if you just want to trade or get a blackbox, goto dell/hp and buy a $1000 i7 desktop and you are done in 5 mins. All this building your ultimate pc is purely masterbation for the computer geeks, it adds nothing to trading vs a stockorder dell pc. The only exception i would add is you can customize the box with 2x ssd(intel x-25e is good cheap choice) raid 0 option, that will improve the disk performance from regular hdd by 10-15x, cost an extra 2k. Only useful if the strategies requires heavy data crunching/backtesting.