Hi, As I do lengthy exhaustive backtest/optimizations using AmiBroker, which can sometimes take days - I am interested in getting a very fast PC to make my trading life easier. From everything I've read, it seems like an overclocked Intel i7 based PC would be the way to go. Maybe overclocking it to 4Ghz, and putting in 8GB of ram. That way I could run multiple optimizations at the same time, saving a lot of time. Does anyone have recommendations for PC custom builders, with good reputations? I am not interested in putting the hardware together myself. I just want to buy one that's ready made. Thanks for any input.
Let me make this quite simple. Do NOT get an overclocked pc for anything to do with trading. Any builder, who tells the truth, will tell you that overclocking any part of a PC can lead to stability issues at some point. The new i7 machines are very fast and with Vista 64 bit you can put in 6 or 12 gb of ram. These new systems are triple channel so they use multiples of 3 for ram. Whatever you decide to get you can check with Dell/Alienware, but I would recommend you look at Maingear or if you want to pay up Falcon Northwest.
Will Amibroker run on a Nvidia Personal Supercomputer? http://www.nvidia.com/object/personal_supercomputing.html
Overclocked PCs can be very stable, I've used them for 10 years. I would not recommend any of the big names unless you want to throw money away. It's not very hard to put a PC together. Contact me and I'll charge you only $350 over parts and expenses to put something together and test it out. Building yourself you typically build for $600 to $1200, a PC of market value of $2,000 to $5,000 depending on the mix of hardware you have. You can get almost everything from newegg. There are a few other places that have good service/deals. You're right the I7 is the best thing out right now. I'm not sure how much amibroker would benefit from a quardcore though. It has to be coded right. Would I overclock for an order machine? If it's done right it would not be a concern but it's probably not even needed but I understand your wanting something for analysis. One other thing, unless you have a 64bit os and amibroker is 64bit you won't be able to take advantage of the ram. Typically in 32bit you get around 3GB depending on videocard but I'd recommend to go with 8GB to be ready for future. You'll probably be best benefit from getting the fastest harddrive you can get, even striping if you have enough money.
Like they've already said, you don't need to overclock your PC. Having said that, here are several companies that fit your redquest specifications: Custom Trading Computers Trading Computers Comp America GL
while this was true 5 years ago, it's not this way anymore. Retail computer prices have gone down significantly. As the retail prices and personal build prices converge, i think the big difference now is quality. When you build a computer yourself, you're buying the best quality brands (asus, crucial, dfi, etc.) vs. a dell with no-name mobo, no-name ram, no-name psu, some POS plastic case, garbage cooling components, etc. Although the actual specs are the same, there's a big difference in my opinion. Everyone has their own opinion about overclocking. The quicker the processors and ram become, the less benefit you get from overclocking. These processing speeds are getting closer and closer to the speed of light, thus the big reason for multiple cores. Max processing speed is around 4.5 Ghz. If overclocking is done properly, you can get a small benefit without sacrificing stability and/or the life of the components. Just depends on how far you push them. For the average user, overclocking todays components is not worth it as for what they do, they will never see a difference. If you are running models that currently take days to run, however, you'd probably benefit.
Another direction . . . Pick up a Used Quad 3.4 Xeon Server on the internet ($800) add Windows Server 2003 enterprise edition ($100 ebay), add 16-2GB DDR2 Ram chips (32GB total) ($350) finish it off with a quad video card ($100). Enterprise utilizes all of those processors to their fullest potential and the 32GB of RAM gives you the throughput you will need for backtesting. Now for under $1400 you have a monster processing machine that was built for a data war.
why would u want to overclock a processor that could probably handle the most intensive trading application on multiple monitors AT HALF ITS CLOCK SPEED probably and you wouldn't even notice... the i7 is an amazing processor at standard speeds.
OP, how much profit increase do you expect from an overclocked computer? My estimate is zero.... Indextrad3r got it right...