Building My Trading Rig (A Documentary)

Quote from mokwit:

Keep the 'photo's coming Tums, I'm really enjoying this.

I have my mental map of my dream trading PC - justified of course by the necessity to buy right at the leading edge of the curve coz I will keep it for 3+ years and they will wriite unbelievable bloatware to match new RAM limits, 8MB caches quads etc

At some point I am going to build/specify a high end data crunching box that will deal with RT satellite quotes from around 25,000 stocks worldwide, but for now I bought a secondhand Dell P4 for $125 (ex RAM upgrade) as I am only looking at around 3000 or so right now due to banwidth restrictions - the 2GB of RAM were almost as much as the PC
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Thanks. I am glad you are enjoying the thread.

The most high end data crunching box I have spec/built was a DEC AlphaServer 4100, with 4 CPUs and 4 GB of memory.

This was about 10 yrs ago, the CPUs were running at an unheard of 625MHz
(don't laugh, Intel was at 266MHz then.)

The memory alone cost 20x more than the computer I am building.
 
Quote from EllisWyatt:

...Watts and Amps are not a measure of power supply quality.
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I have a question on the input side.

Does a 500W PSU draw 500 watts of power?
I know the output is less, maybe 75% of specified power rating. I am just wondering how much would a PSU draw. I need to calculate the supply need because I have other equipment in the room.

Does the PSU draw less power if I have less power hungry components? or is it a constant fixed amount?
 
Quote from Tums:

I have a question on the input side.

Does a 500W PSU draw 500 watts of power?
I know the output is less, maybe 75% of specified power rating. I am just wondering how much would a PSU draw. I need to calculate the supply need because I have other equipment in the room.

Does the PSU draw less power if I have less power hungry components? or is it a constant fixed amount?
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The PSU's power "rating" is the proclaimed maximum it output. If you have less hungry components, the PSU will put out only what it's called upon to power.

You probably want your actual power consumption to be only 75% max, of what the PSU can produce.

There are "power use calculators" on the web to help you determine how large a PSU you need. 400 watts is usually enough for most PC's unless you have a high-draw CPU and/or gamer video card.
 
Quote from Tums:

I have a question on the input side.

Does a 500W PSU draw 500 watts of power?
I know the output is less, maybe 75% of specified power rating. I am just wondering how much would a PSU draw. I need to calculate the supply need because I have other equipment in the room.

Does the PSU draw less power if I have less power hungry components? or is it a constant fixed amount?
More...

My understanding is that your components determine power draw, not necessarily the power supply. The power supply does however factor in a bit due to efficiency issues.

In short, your system will draw "x" amount under load, regardless of the size of your power supply; the power supply rating just determines your ceiling in case you get into things like SLI, Crossfire, etc. For example, you'll often see newer mid-range gaming rigs drawing around 230-300 Watts under load (single GPU).
 
Quote from Tums:

I have a question on the input side.

Does a 500W PSU draw 500 watts of power?
I know the output is less, maybe 75% of specified power rating. I am just wondering how much would a PSU draw. I need to calculate the supply need because I have other equipment in the room.

Does the PSU draw less power if I have less power hungry components? or is it a constant fixed amount?
More...

I think that better PC power supplies are around 80% efficient, ie 80% of energy goes to the DC rails and 20% goes into heat at the power supply itself.

Yes, input power is more or less proportionate to output power.
 
Quote from Tums:

I have a question on the input side.

Does a 500W PSU draw 500 watts of power?
I know the output is less, maybe 75% of specified power rating. I am just wondering how much would a PSU draw. I need to calculate the supply need because I have other equipment in the room.

Does the PSU draw less power if I have less power hungry components? or is it a constant fixed amount?
More...

The power supply draws power on a variable basis based on what the PC is doing at the time. An idle PC will draw less power from the wall circuit and so on.

For sizing a wall circuit, you probably want to think in terms of amps instead of watts. Amps = watts / volts.
 
Thanks for your answers.

That means I can/should specify a larger PSU, knowing that the reserve power does not cost me extra.
 
Not to "hi-jack" the thread or anything but I did happen to come across this Dell T3400 Precision unit on the Business Outlet site on Monday . . .

* Precision Workstation T3400 Mini-Tower: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz/1333MHz/4MB L2) 375W
* Genuine Windows XP x64 Professional


System Price : $699.00

Operating System
Genuine Windows XP x64 ProfessionalMemory
1 GB DDR2 NON-ECC SDRAM 677MHz (2 DIMMs)Floppy Drive
1.44 MB Floppy Disk DriveHard Disk Drive
80 GB SATA II Hard Drive (7200 RPM)Video
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, Dual Monitor DVI CapableCertified Refurbished
Certified RefurbishedBase
Precision Workstation T3400 Mini-Tower: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz/1333MHz/4MB L2) 375WMedia Bay
16X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capabilityHardware Upgrade
Mini-Tower Chassis Configuration
USB Premium Optical 5-Button Mouse
Hardware is Microsoft Vista Capable
USB Keyboard
USB Keyboard
________________________

Add in some more memory and another nVidia NVS graphics card and you are all set to go!

:)
 
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