Have you compared features with this guy's systems on Ebay? His prices seem a bit high but components seem 1st class. He offers various configurations/auctions. http://cgi.ebay.com/ULTRA-FAST-INTE...0598234196?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item19c02b2054
It's not all that fast.... as fast as nearly all traders would need... but it's not "ultra fast". Only 1-year warranty (should get 3-year) $500-$600 too pricey.
marc: 1. Using a SSD will make your system run faster only if you do a lot of disk I/O. My guess is it won't help you. Only a faster processor can make your system faster. 2. The item cited has a processor of "AMD Phenom II X4 965". Passmark score is 4266. By comparison the Passmark score for i7-950 is 6333. The difference in price for the processors is about $100. But of course the motherboard needs to be different (the chassis too, maybe). The AMD Phenom II X4 965 processor should be plenty to handle 4 monitors. Shouldn't be a problem. I used to use an AMD Athlon X2 (about 2-3 times slower) to drive 6 monitors. The monitor support is not an issue. The key consideration is: the more monitors you have, likely you will have more charts. More charts probably require more calculations. Driving the monitors itself is not the issue. It's the computation required to populate all the additional charts (or whatever you are displaying).
I have no issues with ebay, I bought a car on ebay for my daughter, I'll never do that again (buy car on ebay). What's in the box you have now, Processor, PCI slots and supported memory? It really doesn't take much of a computer to run trading software. Some advanced indicators can be math (cpu) intensive and make an old cpu work pretty hard, but you'd be surprised how many old Pentium 4s are still making charts on multiple monitors. You've drawn the attention of Bolimomo and the "Scataphagos" (kneeling with arms raised/extended & lowered/extended ) to your thread, If want to pursue the possibility of running 4 screens (or more) out of your existing box and saving a $1000.00, post the make and model, and let nature take it's course. Who knows, you may get what you're looking for for the price of a video card, a few cables and speedy adapter kit.
The box I'm using was bought mostly by cost, $400 2 years ago. So you can imagine, it's nothing fancy. I tried adding one video card months ago. It was supposed to run 4 monitors, but I couldn't get it to work, so I sold it, on Amazon I think. Then I looked into 2 video cards, running 2 monitors each, and it said I needed a larger power supply. In the end, I don't have the time or desire to fool around anymore, and I have an extra grand now, so I'm ready to just buy a box that will do what I want. marc
And the Dell Outlet website sells "refurbished" 19" flat panel non-widescreen monitors (the E190S) that are perfect for use as a trading screen for $109.
You really need to increase your learning curve about what is realistic and appropriately suitable to support a software trading platform. You don't seem to even understand that 99% of your software programs that are written for trading purposes are not specifically designed to take advantage of multiple cores. Thus, 6-cores (and even 4-cores) are a complete waste of money. They won't be able to take advantage of any software that is written for all of those cores!
As Bolimomo pointed out in a previous post, most trading platform software is not Input/Output, Read/Write sensitive. Thus, an SSD is a complete waste of money.
Go to the Dell Small Business site and take a look at the Precision T3500 Workstation. It comes with a 3-year pro-support and onsite warranty. Windows 7 Professional with XP, and a 525 watt power supply. Order the dual Nvidia NVS 295 graphics cards with 256mb that will support 4 monitors, 4 GB's of DDR3 SDRAM (Non-ECC), and you'll be good to go for roughly $1249.00 http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-t3500/pd?refid=workstation-precision-t3500 It will ship in one day.
I just took delivery of a Dell M6500 laptop workstation. Although I use it for trading, that is not its primary function. I had trouble configuring it. I called the online service and after the smoke cleared he had saved me 25% of what I was expecting to pay. He found two screens at higher resolution that were on sale but not in the configurator. He helped me make informed choices based on the software I run frequently. At the end he found some coupon codes I could use to get me additional discount. I'll never configure one on my own again.