I'm sure you've had your share of experience using shitty equipments at your firm. Now that you are ready to trade remotely, you can finally upgrade. but by how much? well, if you plan on using four 24" monitors, you get pick these up for $150-170 a pop. these deals come and go at least once a week. as far as PCU, the only thing you need to spend good money on is the processor. you don't need any 1gb videocards to trade. you can easily get by using two 256mb cards for a totally of under $100. 4gb ram using 32-bit will also suffice. you'll make just as much money using a dual/quad-core system as you would with a i7 system. the key here is to reserve your trading system with the trading part only. If you download/web-browse/play games, you'll run into hazards soon or later. My recommendation is get four 24" samsung LCDs for under $700. one vertical dual-stand for $200-250. a decent PC for $500-700. and one shitty PC for porn along with a curb-side found CRT. now you got a complete trading station for around 1500. not a bad deal.
Back to that question upthread: what is your requirement for your box? I agree that if you don't do heavy number crunching, an i5 processor box would be plenty. A ready-to-use box is about $500-$700. The only thing is most of the boxes I have seen offered only 1 available PCIe X16 slot. Which is not adequate if you want to drive 4+ monitors. (Unless you use a quad card). I have been using the inexpensive PNY Technologies dual video cards. e.g. 8400 GS, about $60 each. And the 8400 GS is passive cooling. (No fan) I have been using PNY cards for a few years. Out of the many that I bought, only one failed me (AGP bus).
yeah no number crunching if the i5 works well maybe that's a way to save money. That's the main reason to avoid the off the shelf box route was to have the capability to use 2 dual cards rather than a quad card. which sounds better to me for reliability and expandability down the road.
having only 1 PCIe slot could be an issue to some. AGP slot could work, or at worst case scenario, a PCI card will do the job for trading.
Ok guys its been a long process and I have gone back and forth with this. I have decided to go with 6 GB ram system, I7 system. Simple DVD drive, a 500 gb hard drive. Can anyone make a specific recommendation on mother board and video cards?
I can tell you what I use: When I built my 2 boxes, I picked up ASUS P6T motherboard. It's a very nice board. 3 x PCIeX16, 2 x PCI and 1 x PCIeX8 (x8 I think). The only thing that I regret is: I drive 6 monitors with it. Can't get my PCI based dual card to work in this configuration (with Windows 7). killthesunshine mentioned another motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rampage-iii-extreme-big-bang-xpower-x58a-ud9,2688-6.html It has 7 PCIeX16 slots. Enough to drive 14 monitors with dual video cards. The video cards that I use... and they work well and are inexpensive: PNY Technologies 8400 GS, passive cooling, something like this, about $50 each: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133316 It's a dual card. Supports 2 monitors each via the DVI interface.
Thanks Boli, Since you have used these before, what kind of case did you use? Any problems with cooling or problems with size/clearance ? Thanks
Sure wiridil. The case I used is this: Antec Three Hundred - EU Tower - No power supply. About $100 or so. I picked it up from Fry's. http://www.google.com/products/cata...og_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDEQ8wIwBQ# It has a fan on the top, and a fan in the back. (Some pictures showed some cases have a fan on the side.) It houses the ATX form factor motherboards. The 2 fans are pointing right at the CPU chip, one in one out. So cooling is pretty good. No problem so far - 5 months into it. http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&...+-+EU+Tower&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= Size is big. Bigger than what I need really. The tower can take 5-6 SATA drives with no problem. In case you didn't notice, I have an old thread on how I built the box: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=195662
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Boli That card you recommend above shows out of stock on newegg. Can you make another recommendation for video cards? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121360 I saw this, but is this the same? I am taking your advice and trying to stay with passive cooling thanks