I am considering a home infrastructure set-up as below, with a dedicated server running trading algos and another desktop for anything else like coding and youtube. What computer at a reasonable cost do you suggest for the server.
I have to say I love the picture of the IBM PC on the bottom right from the 90's. I'm not an expert on these set ups, but I did build my last 12 PCs. This is not enough information to design a set up that meets your needs. I can only recommend that you have a back up PC for trading and both a cloud and offsite hard drive back up of important data.
I suppose that the company who delivers the service has access for monitoring. What about safety of you algos? It is clear that in the cloud nothing is safe, there are leaks all the time and things get stolen all the time too.
Different matching engines are in different data centres. CME are in Aurora, Illinois. Equities and Equity options are in Equinix NY4 in New Jersey as is FX.
I would suppose that safety has nothing to do with location. Or can your algos be stolen depending on which data centre you use? Available technology is the same everywhere. I would understand that a data centre in Russia or North Korea would not be the best choice, but if they all are in the US...
It depends how latency critical your algo is. If you need to be near the exchange you can get your own server so your algo is protected.