First of all I would like thank you guys for answering my questions. You guys have been very very helpful. I am looking to buy a set up. I went onto newegg.com and found 4 monitors 1680 x 1050 res (20 in) and a set up. Everyone on here says DELL, quality machine low price and when I can use a dell coupon it makes even more sense to go w/ a dell? I've been searching previous threads but not exactly sure what to get? If someone could tell me what are the minimum requirements of the computer I should get 1) Processor speed? 2) Memory? 3) Hard drive space? 4) Video Card mb? I honestly have no idea what this is, but I see some are 512mb others are 256mb. Also, some of the posters say to not pay much money for this and to buy a used for off ebay for a discounted price and install it on your computer. How hard is this? If anyone can tell an idiot like myself exactly what to get I would greatly appreciate that. Thank you
why are you asking these questions? I can see people asking these questions 5 years ago, but computers are so cheap now, any one can afford a top of the line computer (not workstation) with fully loaded memory and a big harddrive. don't worry about what power/feature you need, go and buy everything under the sun. Even if you buy an ideal computer today, it will not be fast enough in a few years, and you will have to buy a new one again. So don't worry, just go and buy the best on the market. p.s. especially when you are talking about multi-monitors (fancy stuff), and you are planning to use this set up for trading (making money), you cannot afford to use a second best set up. The best is to have an oversized machine, so that it won't be obsolete in 6 months.
Intel Core 2 Duo processor (E6400 2mb cache or for a bit more the 4mb cache E6600) 2GB memory (Vista ready) 300GB hard drive is the sweet spot (price/performance) at the moment any graphics card will do unless you plan a lot of gaming, 7600GS or GT is a good bang for buck card at the moment, installation is easy but get a friend or the shop to install it if not confident
Ahhh got my gigs and megs mixed up I run everything off a 160GB 10K Raptor... and still have 150GB left over... but thats because I keep my extensive collection of porn on DVD
Dell is the McDonalds of the computer world. If you want quality and upgradeability you can get better and cheaper elsewhere. I'm upgrading my hard drive set up to a 2 x 320GB RAID0 set up. Having data steaming into your PC 24 hours a day will cause hard drive issues but these should be kept to a minimum with the above set up.
Well said Tums. If you are serious and treat this as a business, you will listen to Tum's post. If you treat it like a hobby, it will pay you like a hobby.
Here's a good basic setup: Intel Pentium-4.253 GHz 533 FSB Pentium 4 ASUS Motherboard P4-B/533(p-4 DDR) 1.0GB DDR RAM PC 2700/333 80GB ultra-DMA IDE HD 7200 RPm + 80 GB Second drive for imaging 1.44 MB 3.5 floppy drive DVD ROM Standard Mouse & Keyboard Sony 48X12X48 CD-CDRW Onboard Sound Altec Lansing Speakers AVS 330 ATX P-4 Tower Case Windows 2000 Prof or XP Prof Net Card 10/100 3Com 3COM V.92 FAX Modem Matrox G200 4 head with TV tuner 3 or 4 monitors (the bigger the bettter) SmartLink UPS SL-100 - 1000 VA Warranty *** Some of these items are dated and you can definitely do better in today's market where PC hardware evolves so quickly, but it's a starting point. Add: Charting package (I use Medved QT, plenty of others, but it's a good starting software) Data Feed w exchange fees (I use IQFeed, they're cheap) and you're off and running. Regards, JJ
Because after a hard day of taking the market out the back and kicking the sh1t out of it I need to kill something