For those considering to build a trading machine by your own, I recommended as follows that is actually my current hardware configuration. [CPU] Athlon64 3000+ [Memory] 184Pin DDR SD-RAM PC3200-1GB(DDR400) Hynix original x2 = 2G [MotherBoard] ASUS A8V-E Deluxe [VGA] PowerColor Bravo X700 256MB(PCIe x16) [Sound] None(On Board) [HDD] Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 SATA300 (SataII) x2 = RAID1 [Optical Drive] Any [FDD] Any [Case] Middle Tower ATX scale that has a good air flow [Power] 450-500W [Monitor] DELL UltraSharp 2005FPW /20inch wide/WSXGA+/ 1680x1050
AMD Athlon64 3000+/939pin is upgradable to Athlon64x2= Dual Core chip that is simply sperior to Intel DualCore. Chose AMD64 939pin chip and mother. For 2G Bytes memory, chose 1Gx2 instead of 564Mb x4. 1G is cheap now, and you can upgrade to 4G, but make sure to buy the identical model. The memory quality is very important of the system. If it's crap, with memory error, simply you will lose the CPU powerformance or blue screen in worst case. It's a matter of performance and stability. Refer to the motherboard manual. ASUS mother is good and stable in average. The selected one is PCIe model. Radeon base Dual DVI Fanless graphic card. This one is cheap like $170. Fanless= quiet. The selected SATA HDD is chaep and quiet. The mother board support hardware RAID. Buy 2, and make them RAID1 for redundancy. For funless video card, the air flow of the case is very important. Make sure there's enough stable power source. DELL 2005FW is excellent for the cheap price with coupon/ sales champaign. I use this and another 19inch SXGA monitor, but would be good to buy two of them. The wide screen is just great for chart software. The above is my personal preference and opinon. I considered the stability and cost performance. Personally I set a heat sink attached to CPU. With no CPU fan and no graphcboar fan, it's very quiet. However, it's only with the good air flow. Now it's summer. Watch out the high temp of the system. Dual Screen setting consumes graphic board power and it becomes hot.
PS. Athlon is basically very cool(temp) chip. P4 highclock is very hot(temp). P4 Dual Core is just horrable. According to the benchmark testing of DualCore Athlon64, it looks superb. It's comaptible of 939pin, so I will upgrade to AthlonX2 as soon as the price drops.