I'm looking for a few opinion on whether I should (A)buy a new already built computer, (b)Buy new parts and put it myself or (C)upgrade. I don't really understand all the hardware (if they're compatible with each other or not, etc), which would make me lean to (a), but since building your own could provide better quality and price (as I'm told), I don't really mind putting the time to understand the parts. I looked at a few online sites (newegg.ca, amazon.ca, dell.ca and apple.ca). I'm from Canada so if anyone have any great computer sites, that would be awesome. As for upgrading, this was custom built many years ago with a lot of help. My current trading comp spec is: Microsoft Windows XP home edition Intel(r) pentium 4 CPU 2.6 GHZ, 2.6 ghz, 2.00GB of RAM (4 sticks of 512) P4C800 Asus motherboard Radeon X1600 series graphic card Using Sierra Charts with Interactive Brokers I automated all of my trades in excel and as of lately, showing signs of slow down. Does fine during live but today it gave me that vibe that it's going to give up soon. Any comments would be great!
Computer parts are not manufactured to last a long time, so you need to be prepared to replace older machines even if they seem to be working fine. You should definitely see improvement with a new computer compared to what you have with things like automation and back testing. There is a never ending debate about building a computer yourself or buying it already made. Donât listen to people who just say build it without further comment. You can get a prebuilt machine with a three year warranty and North American tech support for a reasonable price. The Dell 3400 in their business section is popular with people here. If you want to make computers your hobby and enjoy doing all the research and troubleshooting yourself, donât need the ongoing tech support, and have the spare time then building a computer yourself can save you money (but not time) and can be enjoyable if you like that sort of thing. It will be an exercise in futility and frustration if something goes wrong and you canât figure it out. I have had many computers over the years and there has been several times when a strange problem or compatibility issue popped up that I couldnât solve so tech support was beneficial for me. Several will tell you to just build it and you can save huge amounts of money. Gnome would say that is not true and to buy the Dell 3400 and opt for the good tech support.
Just an update of what I decided~ I took 1.5 weeks off to look through vendors for individual hardware as well as pre-built, I decided to go with building my own. So now the current spec is... Intel i7 920 Quad Core P6T Asus X58 motherboard Patriot Extreme 6G 3X2 DDR3 Corsair 520 Watt XFX Geforce 9600 GSO 768mb Antec Tower Total Cost: 1245.08 CAD, which includes taxes and shipping. I kept my other essential pieces of course. The harddrives, cd-dvd drive, monitors, mouse, and keyboard. It took me nearly 2 full days(42 hours.. yes, I kept count) with barely any sleep to put it together, constantly fixing one problem at a time. Currently it is running absolutely perfect. Decided to put it in simulation for today and yesterday to make sure temperature and voltages were stable. Gonna load it with tons of data and backtest it through the entire weekend. It was rough, but I am super happy =)