WF: I think the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor is a good one for today's technology. I don't have any experience using it but per Passmark benchmark it has a score of 6052. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html In my earlier days I made the mistake of buying boxes solely looking at the price tag without checking "under the hood" on what processor was used. I ended up having to upgrade ("my old one is not fast enough...") sooner than I thought. Price of the processor itself is only one thing. One must also check on the other pieces that accompany the processor - memory (e.g. DDR2 versus DDR3), socket (thus motherboard), chassis, cooling requirements, power supply, etc.. All these components (higher price) add up to the price of the box. I usually don't like buying something that only marginally meets my requirements. On the other hand there is no need to buy a Ferrari to deliver pizza either.
3) Pick a motherboard that works with the CPU. 9) Pick a chassis My computer sits at desk level beside my desk within easy reach of the CD/DVD Burner. I've never been bothered by fans/HD noise and I didn't want to change my layout/routine so I knew I wanted a mid-tower chassis (same as old box) no side windows, neon or flashing LEDs, thank you. Selecting the motherboard was probably the most time consuming part of this build. I wanted a lot of "future proofing" in this box and plenty of room for expansion. I chose a MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard. "AMD's 890FX northbridge provides 42 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth, more than you'll get on Intel's X58 or P55 chipsets or on AMD's 890GX or 785GX chipsets,"* (think .. PCI-Express MLC Internal Solid State Drives). This board has USB 2.0 & 3.0 (capable of 4.8Gb/s transfer rates), eSATA, SATA 2.0 & 3.0 (6Gb/s), a pair of gigabit LAN RJ45 network jacks and five (5) PCI Express 20x16 expansion slots, two video cards will run in (x16/x16) mode or four in (x8/x8/x8/x8) mode. Here's the PCSTATS review: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2515 * PCSTATS review
LOL! I always wondered what those flashing LEDs and side windows are for. Are those the pimp car design of computer chassis?
I believe so, I think to thought process is, the LEDs use so little current, why not make the box look like it's doing something ,,, when it ain't.
Now if I can turn those LEDs into a heat meter... of the CPU not of the stock market... that would be fantastic! LOL
4) Decide on how much memory to have. I remember paying hundreds of dollars for sticks of Kbs/Mbs of RAM. I've taken the side cover off my old computer twice (except for cleaning), both times were to add memory. I'm happy to pay $200 for a Quad Channel Kit of 4x4s and max out my 16Gbs of Dual Channel DDR3, if it held 32Gbs I'd do the same. 5) Pick an optical device I thought of pulling my memorex burner out of my old box, but for $20 what the hell. 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. I'm building a trading computer. I don't store photos on it, edit home movies or play games with it. When it came to choosing a drive(s) I spent about one second deciding, Solid State (SSD). I have a 80Gb HD in my old box and after almost 7 years of trading with this box I have 9Gbs of used space, (XP pro sp3). I hope to utilize the "full monty" of this new machine and my first opportunity to do that was plugging a SSD into a SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) Interface and getting - Read speed of 355MB/sec and Write speed of 75MB/sec on a 64Gb drive for $120.00. I also installed a WD 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 (6.0Gb/s) 3.5" Internal Hard Drive to store data for back-testing/optimizing and a clone of the SSD. http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1
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. Currently I'm running 4-23 inch monitors out of my old box (I have since new). To prove the point, " Trading typically require only 2-D graphics," take a look at these cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129042 I've run four monitors (CRTs & LCDs) off these two cards for almost 7 years! Look at the memory, 64Mb of DDR in PCI slots, probably doesn't get much more "old school" than that! I NEVER had a moments trouble out of these cards, ever. Needless to say I'm upgrading my video cards. I'm building this box around the option of expanding to 8 or 10 monitors. This motherboard DOES NOT have onboard video, it does however have 5 PCI Express 2.0x16 expansion slots (2 x16, 2 x8, 1 x4), 1 PCI Express x 1 and 1 PCI slot. I'm going with 4 NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295 chipset cards, each card will supply a digital signal to two monitors giving me the option of eight monitors with 23W Max Power Consumption, on each card. Since these cards are passive cooled (no fan/moving parts/noise) I chose a chassis with a cooling grid for this area of the motherboard and a rear case fan of course.
On the issue with memory... There is such a thing as "too much memory". Sort of. I learned it through my exercise. 1. If you use an 32-bit operating system like XP, Microsoft restricted the memory space to only 4GB. The OS simply does not see any additional memory you have installed. Anything above 4GB is indeed a waste. 2. I have installed 12GB on my system originally (Windows 7, 64-bit). The OS recognized all 12GB all right. When I monitored the system usage under normal operating conditions (with my trading app, with all my layouts/charts, etc.)... The system hardly used over 4GB. So I decided to trim down the memory to 6GB. Memory clips are much less expensive than they used to be. So buying all 16GB at once nowadays may not be a big deal. Or you can buy half, monitor the actual usage under normal trading conditions before deciding if you want to add more. Higher memory is most likely not needed unless you are doing heavy number crunching (e.g. giant spreadsheets or optimizing for back-testings, etc.). RE: On the issue with optical drive... Yes I agree... for $20 bucks... don't even think about re-using old technologies. Just buy a new DVD-RW drive. The Double-sided, or Double-layer (or both) RW drives are not worth buying IMO. Yes they double the capacity you store on the DVD. But the discs are expensive. Besides... Blu-ray RW drives are around the corner. Today they cost about $130 - $160. Still high. Wait for price erosion. In a year or so perhaps they will come down to the $80 level. Skip DVD DL, DS and wait for Blu-ray.
On the issue with multiple video cards... IMO it is the best (to save yourself headaches) if you plan to have many monitors on your new system: to stay with the same make, same bus type, same model if possible. This is to reduce the chance of compatibility issues. For example if you know you will have 5 dual video cards, it may worth buying a mother board that offers 6 PCIe X16 slots. This way, you save yourself some headaches stocking a spare. Buy 6 cards, use 5, have one as a spare. Now if you have a mix bus types, with x16, x8, x4... it gets expensive to have spares. Different bus types, but the same make, and ideally same series would be better as far as compatiblity is concerned. Having different makes, different graphic chips, different bus types can be hard to deal with.
Thanks Mr. B for all your input/support, I'm sure you've forgotten more about all this than I'll ever know. I value your (all) suggestions/opinions and totally agree with the above statement. I understand the amount of supported memory in the different 32/64 bit OSs (XP pro, Windows 7 pro) and made many decisions in my build based on which OS I chose. As I suggested in a previous post, I began my build "with the end in mind." I'm planning to run ALL my trading software in 64 bit Windows 7 pro, thus the 16 gigs will be "available," but as you stated maybe not used (future proofing). Furthermore, I found a "wrinkle" in the idea of adding memory later (as needed) when the processor/motherboard supports dual channel memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture The terms Dual, Triple, Quad and Hexa Channel Kit(s) are nothing more than a retailer's buzz word that describes the number of matched modules within the "kit" (set). A "Dual Kit" contains 2 matched modules (sticks) a "Triple Kit" contains 3 matched modules (sticks) and so on. I don't know the intricate workings of a memory stick, but I have experienced the compatibility issues described in the Wikipedia post. Not to create a firestorm on this issue but, a "Quad Kit" is not 2 matched pairs of 2 modules, per se,,, it is a matched set of 4 modules (in my case 4x4Gb) selected to work together as 16Gb and guaranteed (by the manufacturer) to function at the advertised speed and capacity (e.g. PC3 12800 16Gb ). One last thought. I'm building a trading computer, to be used daily for day trading and future backtesting/optimizing, with my eye (both eyes) on automation. If, "(Unless) you want to use your box to play video games as well," or you're into over clocking the processor and/or RAM, adding the Mobo's maximum memory (loading all DIMMs) is probably not a good idea. I'm sure if anyone's into that sort of thing they already know this. As I said, "I've taken the side cover off my old computer twice (except for cleaning), both times were to add memory."