I was thinking about upgrading my old machine.I want to fit a Quad Card and run 4 monitors,the sole purpose is to use this PC to Daytrade.What sort of Spec should I look to upgrade my machine to,replys much appreciated
I just bought a new Dell last week. I found a 4550 Dimension with 2.4ghz, 640mb ram, 30 gig hd for $630. My only problem was that it came loaded with XP Home. I have Win2000 pro disks so I will overwrite if needed. So, I called customer service to see if I could get 2000 pro pre-loaded on it. He recommended the Optiplex upgrade which is more customizable, but nearly 1.5x the price. When I told him I would just overwrite XP with my 2000 pro disks he said "well for what you do (trading) you need a strong computer, and with the Dimension you are just getting a little home computer...and you are just nickle-and-diming." (By the way, I've been using an old Dimension for years that has been great.) That offended me and soon I hung up. Honestly as far as I can see most of the internal components are the same between Optiplex and Dimesion, it's just the customization that costs more. Just don't trust Dell reps to get you the best deal.
Most important, Win2000 or XP Pro OS. Next most important, adequate RAM... 512mb, or more. Unless you're running some power number crunching program, any Celeron, P4, or Athlon CPU will be just fine. (If you go with the Celeron, suggest you get a MB with 400mhz FSB and DDR 2100 RAM. Some of the junkier ones are only 100mhz with PC100 RAM.)
I'm with you. Dell is making is much less convenient (and more expensive) to get a machine with Win2000. "Dimension = little home computer..." That's hogwash!. It's got MORE than enough power and flexibility to run any trader set-up.
Check out your case. If you built it yourself, you'll know what it runs, but if you bought it you might have a little trouble. For instance, back in 94 I bought a Gateway and paid $50 for a full tower, with the idea that I'd be upgrading it myself. Turned out that the full tower case didn't have an ATX backplane, so I could not put in an ATX mainboard . Gateway is suck. Anyway, the first thing is to check out your case. If it's not ATX, then you'll have to choose between getting a new one, or of limiting your mainboard selection to that particular form factor. If you do get a new case, I encourage you to check out Lian Li (I bought an aluminum full tower). They are more expensive, but they are significantly better than the typical case. My friends at MSFT told me that once anybody builds with a Lian Li, they don't switch back to all that other stuff. Don't forget to get a good power supply and UPS. You may need to run your broadband modem off of that UPS, BTW.
I know the old Dell Dimensions used non-standard mobo and power supply specs/dimensions--making upgrading to non-Dell components next to impossible.
Dell buys the cheap components and then makes up for it by burning the systems in, pretty old fashioned way to achieve quality. If you want a good machine find somebody that really knows what works and have them bundle it. The VPR Matrix's from Best Buy are pretty good too, Intel motherboards, no proprietary stuff, etc. I only went with Best Buy because they extended credit to me but I'm really happy with the computer so far. Max