As one of the "new guys" on the block I find the posts in ET very helpful, thank you. Anyway awhile back I was reading about putting together a PC for trading. The problem is I can not find it again. I thought it may have been the Trader Mike site but if it was I can't find it. The article listed items or parts that were the best bet with respect to video cards, memory, monitors, processors and the like. It could have been a link from one of the posts here, but I have looked and can not seem to find it. My PC started making more noise than usual, I looked to see that a few fans were not working. Not knowing anything about computers (glad there is a mouse) I took it to the shop. I was told my video cards were going bad and would have to be replaced also one of my 17inch flat screens keeps going off, have to reset it and it last for a few minutes then blinks off again. I know it is the monitor as I changed it with another and the other works fine. I will stop now, in hopes someone may know the article I am talking about. Thanks for listening Charlie btw the damn pc is still makes too much noise and I recall a post saying a monitor porblem like mine may be a faulty capasitor.......
If the noise is from your video card, then it's the fan. Maybe you can just replace the fan for cheap. For a trading rig.... 1. Win XP (Pro preferred) 2. Any P4/Athlon class, or better, processor 3. 512MB-2GB RAM, depending on your apps 4. No onboard video chip 5. No noisy video card fans, so NVidia Quadro NVS or Matrox preferred 6. Enough PCI and PCIE slots to run your peripherals and number of desired monitors. Everything else is bells and whistles.
In addition to what Gnome says there is an elitetrader article here: http://www.elitetrader.com/tr/index.cfm?s=12&t=61
Thanks guys, I appreciate your time and expertise, there is so much to it I guess I will learn as time goes by. Thanks for that site Whatisis, that is the one I was referring to guess I did not look hard enough for it. Gnome is right it is pretty old but still interesting, gives me more things to ask questions about. right now I have AMD Athlon 64 processor 2800+, 1.80 GHz with 1.00 GB Ram the display (vid cards i guess) are NVIDIA GeForce 2MXMX400 NVIDIA TNT2 Model 64 DVD/CD ROM Tsst Corp CD/DVDW TS-H552U TSST Corp DVD-ROM SH-d162C 3 17in LCD monitors (prinston from costco) one is on the fritz Not knowing any better I think the video cards are VGA Anyway, I will keep reading up on things, much to learn. If I want to stay with 3 monitors is it better to have 2 2port video cards or one 4 port video card? Have a great holiday Charlie
You don't need a fancy computer trade stocks. You can trade stocks with a cheap E-Machine for $300.00 and XP home edition. You probably will want to upgrade to at least 2 monitors later on, so you can buy a dual video card for $50.00 brand new. You can even daytrade on your cell phone or PDA for free(even without your own paid internet access). Just go driving around looking for wireless access points. Or bring your PDA or cell phone to the library or starbucks coffess and use their internet connection for free if your's isn't hooked up. LOL. Just some suggestions. LOL. But seriously, all you need a cheap E-machine with XP home to trade stocks. Buy brand new. Computers are cheap enough now a days. But if you have the money to spend, then go for the best. Not sure what the best would be. Since it is a matter of opinion. Is it Dell? I have a HP that lasted me 6 years so far. It's still going strong.
4-port cards are for those who don't have more than 1 PCI slot available or who run more than 4 monitors, and they are comparatively expensive. 2x Dualhead cards will be significantly less. BTW, your trading rig is plenty good for trading just the way it is.