I think you might run 1000 charts with no problem. I run about 30 intra-day charts and my CPU runs a "0 percent" all day long except the moments when writing data to archive.
Probably use a pentium 4 without issues. No benchmarks for trading platforms/software is a problem...so we all overkill on our rigs
Load all of your trading software then check Task Manager. Other than running videos on my trading rig, I can't make it use "10% CPU"... even with videos, still about 10% max... unless I run/archive tic charts and run custom formulas.
i use an i7 and an i3. both have 8gig and run windows 7. they're both about the same for the platform i use and daytrading. i watch 120 stocks and have 30 charts up. i think the more important upgrade is to get an SSD drive to replace the old hard disk. that's usually the bottleneck. i switched to SSD and everything is much much faster.
I understand that even the bests of everything we do would probably be inadequate for doomsdays. There is always something that we missed. It is that something that does us in. We can try to be redundant, triple-redundant on everything... trying to save us. But we also have our checkbooks to protect. Everything sounds fine and dandy... backup power, RAID, multiple internet feeds, multiple brokerage accounts, cell phone + landline, etc.. But when the price tag is revealed... things don't look that rosy any more. However, volatile markets are not that far fetch. I have experienced one, in 2008. And many of us here saw what happened during that "Flash Crash" in May 2010. We can never be too prepared. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't do something to saveguard yourselve. You need to balance between how much protection you seek, and how much money you can afford to spend on such protections. Kind of like buying insurance policies. You can't justify the spending, you walk away and take the risks. I understand that and respect that. To me, picking an i5 versus i3, with minimal money spent? That's a no brainer. Why buy something that is only marginal? Only because we haven't seen the volatile markets come back since 2008? You know... when the Iranians fire a missile at Israel, or the North Koreans at USA, or a dirty bomb set up in San Francisco... they ain't gonna give you a 5-day notice so that you can upgrade your equipment to prepare for it.
I think 8GB RAM as Scat said is a good balance. I only have 6GB on my 2 desktops and I get by. But with today's prices, 8GB is not a big deal. The higher the better, but on the other hand it may also be unnecessary. If you have heavy computing involved other than just displaying quotes, the higher the RAM the better. To me I think SSD is overrated. I have them on a few of my systems. I honestly can't say I observed a big difference. But in today's world, SSD is so inexpensive now, having SSD is not all that much more expensive.
That is stated very well. It's a matter of how much you trade, when you trade, how you trade, etc. If you're 24/7 into the futures and trading 50 lots at a time, you're probably going to want a redundant system with it's own data connection all being one click away from logging into your account. At least you can log in and go flat if necessary. If you're buying 100 shares of Apple in March and selling it in October, a landline should suffice as your backup. So when people come on here asking what they need for a system, it starts with how they trade, or how they intend to trade with the system they are going to build.