This is my normal view too. I am aware of the performance difference between a PCIx based card and USB interface based gadget. However, I have been using the 2 SIIG USB-VGA display adapters to drive 2 external monitors on my new box with no problem. My application is only 2-d graphics charting. Didn't seem to make any difference.
I stand corrected. :>) It is easier and less costly, however, to use video cards rather that other gadgets. Gadget guy that you are... have you looked into the new monitors with HDMI output which can connect a few/several monitors serially to use only port?
Probably the nicest "PC Build Guide" I've seen is posted on the homepage of the Eureka website: http://eureka123.com/ Retail traders tend to be more cost sensitive, and the referenced doc may or may not be ideally suited to them. I suspect most retail traders will want to stick with IBM, HP or Dell, who make fine machines and offer next day on site support warranties and that kind of thing. On the other hand, algorithmic, hft, and other speed-sensitive pro traders may be interested in the build guide. For my own trading operation, I consider PC technology to be commodity priced, even at the current high end. I'm primarily focused on real time number crunching, tick resolution decisions, low latency, reliability, and silent running (I don't want to hear the damn thing, not even a little). At current price levels, the technology cost of my operation tends to be immaterial in the broader business context of profit stream and risk avoidance.
Technologies advancements... this is making things too easy... compared to 20 years ago... building your own PC. Just helped a friend putting together a new computer from parts. He inherited some old board/chassis/processor/memory that he wanted to re-use and bought some new disk drive / DVD-RW. It's an older processor and motherboard. The connect sockets are fairly well labelled and "mistake"-proof. e.g. on a 10-pin connector they usually fill up one of the 10 holes at different corner so that you can't plug a wrong 10-pin connector to a different 10-pin socket. After connecting the 2 SATA devices, cooling fans, cables for the front USB, power/reset switches and LEDs, audio jacks, and speaker (if there is any), power for all devices... that's pretty much it. Powered up. Check BIOS. Harddrive and DVD-RW drives are in place with the SATA controller. Keyboard/mouse good to go. Boot up Win7 DVD. Voila! The installation script pretty much took care of everything. Entered the owner's name, computer name, time-zone and locale stuff. It rebooted a few times. I even gave him one of my old EVGA PCI dual display cards. After Windows was running successfully, shut down and popped in the PCI card. Rebooted Windows. Windows 7 already knew about the added EVGA display card. No need to install the driver separately. Just enable the second monitor and it's ready to go. The advantage of installing the latest Windows - it pretty much has all the drivers on popular devices (especially older models). I didn't even need to put in any of the manufacturer's driver CD. Monitor resolution set to the max. The network (wired) all ready to go for Internet connection. The speakers worked. These days, lots of things are built in to the motherboard. Stereo audio, NIC, USB, keyboard/mouse, SVGA video... From start to finish, about 2 to 3 hours. Had it wrapped up. Just when I kept hearing comments that DIY is hard... This generation had it easy. The installation script and the plug-n-play mechanism took care of most of the stuff. I remember the days that I had to manually edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT this and CONFIG.SYS that. Not to mention doing all the planning on IP address, subnet mask, gateway's IP, and DNS server IP, backup DNS server IP... all that stuff. And that RS-232, modem, video, NIC, sound card, everything... used to be added on separately, one card at a time, to the expansion slots (ISA, EISA, AGP... remember those?). Building a new PC used to take 2 to 3 days.
Building your own trading computer I want to thank Bolimomo for starting this thread. This thread inspired me to begin accumulating the necessary components to build a new trading computer, and I would like to share that process. Instead of posting a pick list of parts I wanted to begin at the beginning of my process. After a quick google search of âbuilding your own trading computerâ I was disappointed in my findings. The first site was written in 2008, and the second site had a list of components that included a 3.5â floppy drive! Building your own trading computer can have several meanings, you can DIY, you can request a local shop to assemble your selection of components for you, or you can âDesign Your Ownâ on a manufacturers website. I hope the following posts will benefit all who are considering building or buying a computer that will be used primarily for trading. To quote Stephen R. Covey, â Begin with the end in mind.â * Your trading style will dictate most of the components you choose for your computer. If you are a veteran trader with a proven style/method of trading or you are just replacing an older computer, this task is a lot simpler. However, if you are new to trading and donât know what you will be asking the computer to do for you 3,6 or 12 months from now, deciding on components today may be (IMO should be) much more thought provoking. To make this thread a bit more interesting Iâll add this, the components Iâve chosen for my build are intended to last seven (7) years, as long as the computer Iâm replacing (which I also built). Talk about having the end in mind. This is my starting point, the end, the day I retire the new âsuper computerâ Iâm building today. So here are the questions I asked myself before I started swiping my credit card. 1. What do I want this box to do for me today, that my old box canât/wonât? 2. What new/different tasks will I ask this computer to do within next year or two? 3. How do I see myself participating in the markets 3,4 or 5 years form now? Hypothesizing what my trading needs may be in 3,4 or 5 years may seem like an attempt at reading tea leaves, but I have used the same trading software for many years and I have no intention of changing. As we all know the updates to most trading software just keep on coming and those updates can eventually stress a (7 yr old) computer. Furthermore, I would like to investigate some additional software to augment the system/method Iâve been using that I believe holds much more potential if I had the proper tools to implement its greatness. * The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Thanks for your kind words, WF. I think that in your last category above, typically it's considered "customizing your configuration" and not as much as "building your computer". Big box makers like Dell and HP have their own designs, typically, on the chassis and maybe motherboard. Other than that they use many of the computer components that you and I can purchase from retailers (e.g. memory, disk drives, optical drives - Blu-ray/DVD, video card, etc..). And now that many manufacturers sell motherboards (with many functions built-in) and cases and power supply, "building your computer" has become very simple. I typically don't plan to use a box for >7 years. As much as I would like to, typically I will be driven by one reason or another that I need to upgrade/replace sooner than that. Especially in today's world compared to the 80's. Computers, like phones, are obsolete not by physical conditions but rather by functions. (Ask my nephew who changes phones every 12 months or so. ) But there are stores who still use Intel 80286 boxes running DOS 5.0. If your computer still runs and the application on it serves what you need, there is no reason to change. Traders may have special computing needs. But by and large not all the different from other professions. I stand amused sometimes seeing "traders" wanting to buy this and that computers with some super duper 3-D graphics cards, SLI, getting GPGPGPGPGPGPGPU... enough graphics power to re-render the whole Toy Story animations in 30 minutes. While in reality, all we use it for is to plot some basic 2-d candlestick charts. Most people just need "A" box to run. While others may want more, like driving 10 monitors from one box, or backtesting for the past 10 years with nth cominbations for optimization. You can spend very little. Or you can spend a lot. It is kind of like the high-end speakers or high-end sports car thing. I believe one should spend on what is truly needed, and be more skeptical of what are not. Some salesmen tried to sell me a $20,000 a pair Klipsch Palladium P-39F speakers. But if my hearing cannot perceive the difference between the $20,000 pair of speakers and the $1,000 pair, the delta dollar spent will only be a waste.
An update from what I had learned. A quick checklist for those who are thinking of building your own trading computer and assembling it together. 1) Review your trading style. This dictates what hardware you should have. Mostly it is a consideration for the speed of the CPU required. The faster the CPU the better typically. But also more expensive. No need to buy a fast CPU if your trading style doesn't need it. 2) First pick a CPU (Intel versus AMD, what model, quad-core, six-core, etc.). This dictates everything else (e.g. motherboard, memory and so on). 3) Pick a motherboard that works with the CPU. Consideration: maximum memory supported, bus (e.g. PCI, PCIe X16, etc.). Do you have some old cards that you may want to re-use? The form factor - that dictates the chassis you need. 4) Decide on how much memory to have. These days it should be 4 GB upwards. 4 to 6 GB is good. But anything more may be a waste unless you have a high requirement for number crunching (e.g. back-testing, real-time scanning, etc.). 5) Pick an optical device - blu-ray or DVD or DVD Double Layer or Double Sided, etc..). Should be a RW (read-write) drive so that you can create your own DVDs for backups or for cutting DVDs. 6) Pick one (or more) hard drive as the system/data drive. These days typically 256 GB to 2 TB, with SATA interface. SSD (solid state disk) or faster 10k rpm disks should be had only if you can take advantage of their speed as they are much more expensive. 7) Most motherboard has 1 onboard video these days. Consider if you want to have multiple monitors. If so, decide on a video card. The most practical ones are dual-cards (2 monitors) and low-end graphics. Trading typically require only 2-D graphics. Unless you want to use your box to play video games as well. 8) Add up all the components so far. Figure out the power requirements. Typically about 400W to 500W unless you have many add-on cards. 9) Pick a chassis that can house the motherboard and all the expansion cards and peripherals (hard drives, optical disks) you want to have. 10) Decide what operating system to put on the box. Purchase new OS license/media or re-use what you have.
Boli Just to shine a little reality on the subject of what kind of CPU power and RAM is needed for running trading software, hereâs the required minimums for Interactive Brokers and NinjaTrader (6.5). IB TWS: 1.5GHz Pentium and higher Athlon XP1500+ 1 GB RAM w/XP Ninjatrader (6.5) CPU: Minimum Pentium 4 or higher 1GB RAM w/XP Check those out on the http://www.cpubenchmark.net site, (look in Low End chart). I agree with your points on graphic display, both quality (DVI vs VGA) and quantity (multiple monitors). Analog signal processing has improved to the point where major differences in image quality can be difficult to detect. Unless you're a pro photographer, or someone else who needs superprecise, top-notch image quality, a LCD with an analog signal should be fine. I have had no problem viewing charts using a LCD monitor on an analog signal. And you added the punch line, "Unless you want to use your box to play video games as well." I believe this dual purpose of a trading computer is when building/configuring reality is thrown out the window, and the box ends up being, a gaming box that I trade with and ends up costing (maybe) hundreds more than needed.
I sure didn't plan on using the box I have today for seven years. But as you said, "If your computer still runs and the application on it serves what you need, there is no reason to change." I wanted to clarify that this old box is my trading computer, that's all it's ever been used for, painting bars and lines on charts and firing off orders. No family photos/videos on that hard drive, no games either. I'm not typing this post on it, its had a sheltered life, lol. Speaking of nephews and phones, mine was over the other evening and when we were standing outdoors he showed me how he could scan the sky (with his phone) and identify constellations. Wow, how did we live without one of those? I'm still trying to shut off my speaker! 1. What do I want this box to do for me today, that my old box canât/wonât? A. Actually my only need is a bit more CPU speed. During heavy trading (open/news) this processor just can't keep up and print the charts. In my charting program I'm viewing seven charts (different time frames/ticks) on 4 monitors and have a few math intensive indicators on most of them. I also have the Ninja DOM being fed data from IB. I see no lag on the DOM during these wild times, but it is IB data. B. As I said in a previous post I have had no problem viewing charts using a LCD monitor on an analog signal. However, the four monitors I have now are full HD and I would like to upgrade my video cards to take full advantage of the quality of the monitors. 2. What new/different tasks will I ask this computer to do within next year or two? A. I would like two more monitors, and the capability to run eight or ten total. Maybe I'm just getting old, blind and lazy but I've always had multiple screens and I like big charts in different time-frames. I don't like stacking them and having to click to view this and click to view that. B. My current method of back testing & optimizing is beyond my current processor and my programs. It is a tedious task (limiting data) and I would like to investigate a more efficient program(s) for future system development. 3. How do I see myself participating in the markets 3,4 or 5 years form now? A. If I'm still around and speculators are still allowed to participate I'm feeling the need to go full auto or robo. I sure hope it doesn't take me that long, but I know for a fact I'll need some forward looking technology in this build. The brown truck dropped off another box of goodies today.
I used Bolimomo's "Quick Checklist for those who are thinking of building your own trading computer and assembling it together." I edited some, a bit. Although I felt I had a good idea of what I needed/wanted in my build, I found this checklist very helpful and very thorough, and some results very surprising. 1) Review your trading style. My trading style has been all over the map since I started trading. It's only been in the last four or five years that I have settled down into a single style/method of trading. As my charting software continues to update and I add more draw tools and studies on differing time frames my CPU was (silently/slowly) slipping far behind the recommended speed for my style of trading, but it (my cpu) just kept chugging along. According to the link below, I'm a power user! http://www.ensignsoftware.com/support/systemrequirements.php 2) First pick a CPU (Intel versus AMD, what model, quad-core,six-core, etc.). Recommended CPUs (from above) Benchmark Score #s (x,xxx): Intel® Core⢠2 Duo, 2.0 GHz or faster (1,099) Intel® Core⢠2 Q6600 Quad-Core, 2.4 GHz or faster (2,976) There's quite a spread between 1,099 - 2,976 ... 1877 points (a hell-of-a-lot of CPUs). I believe this is a great example of how different styles of trading and hardware call for different tools (CPUs). I guess this is why Bolimomo suggested, "Review your trading style." I did, and I was VERY surprised how (changing) my style/method of trading over the years affected the required processor speed . I've chosen an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T. Ensignsoftware utilizes multi-core technology as does NinjaTrader, "this processor is equipped with AMD's Turbo CORE technology, it automatically switches from six cores to three turbocharged cores for applications that just need raw speed over multiple cores"* I believe this feature will be helpful when running programs that don't utilize multi-core technology. Here's the Newegg link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849 * From AMD advertisement