yeah building comp's is for some and not others... you better know what the heck your doing. I personally am pretty computer literate, however even setting up multiple monitors became a challenge for me on my computer when i had to override the vga port on that main blue screen..... but it felt sooooooo good the do it myself instead of having geek squad do it for 300+ .... happy computer building! ... oh yeah happy trading! ; )
Building your own trading computer
- Thread starter Bolimomo
- Start date
Quote from killthesunshine:
you guys are just throwing components/money at it have no clue what hardware you really need ..funny its a joke just throwing $ at a problem
when you buy a car you try to figure out what the dealer has in it, right? yyou bargain from there. you just don't throw money at him do you?
determine the minimum config that you need then you can make intelligent choice
Not sure why you would make such a generalized statement.
I don't know about others. For me I stated very clearly that I started with a need. My old computer was not fast enough to handle my charting need when I started using a more sophisticated indicator on TradeStation. The computer simply froze during the first 5 to 10 minutes when the market opens and whenever we have a fast market. Those are crucial times for me to trade.
How would you determine your "minimum config" when all you know is that your existing box is *not fast enough*? Perhaps you can get borrow a box with an i3, a box with an i5 and a box with an i7 to do trial and error to find out?
For me I just took the easy way. I chose a processor that is reasonably fast on the market. I know my price differential for getting the top-of-the-line processor and a middle-of-the-road one would only be a couple of hundred dollars. For me it's money well spent in getting an insurance. My trading is more important.
The best that can happen to you is the market runs away without you because your computer froze for a few minutes... because you want to save a couple of hundred bucks.
As we often hear about machines freezing up under hectic conditions, thought I'd throw this out..
1. I have never had my rig freeze at open, close, or a fast market. Never. And I don't run hi-power machines (not bargain ones, either).
2. I collect data for about 250 issues and indices.
3. The average, routine rate at which I receive data is only about 20kps. (That's right, "K"... a mere trickle through a fat pipe). Of course, that's dependent upon the number of issues tracked. I suppose if one tracked all issues on all exchanges, one might be getting data at 1 Mps. (I haven't bothered to try to measure the amount the data rate increases during hectic times... seems it wouldn't be much more than 10X, if that.)
4. Modern CPUs are able to process BILLIONS of data samples per second. Modern video cards can output 10 Gps and more.
Therefore, I propose the notion that when a computer "freezes up" in hectic times, odds are the fault is NOT with the computer being "unable able to handle it", but rather somewhere else along the data path... data vendor's servers, data software, internet pathway.
However, there are exceptions. (1) Tic charts can tax your CPU. So you might want to cut down on the number of tic charts you display, if applicable. (2) "Sophisticated indicators" (as mentioned by OP above) and/or "custom indicators" in your software. Indicators "pre-packaged" in your software likely have been programmed to run in the RAM and not use the CPU hardly at all. But if your indicator is not of the pre-packaged variety, the CPU gets heavily involved. You can imagine the CPU being overloaded if you run several tic charts with custom indicators.
Bottom line... unless you run custom indicators of some sort, odds are any moderately capable computer can handle the data stream and charting duties... even during fast markets.
Thanks for your comments Scataphagos.
In my case the computer "freeze" was CPU busy. Not the network throughput. Trust me. I have been a computer programmer and technical support for over 20 years. I have a CCNA and a MCSE. I know a little bit about computers and networks.
They are custom indicators that are based on Bollinger Bands. BB uses standard deviations. Squareroot of summation of square of differences. The squareroot is CPU intensive. And I am doing it on high periodicities on 42 tick charts and 1min chart.
With my new computer based on i7-930, problem solved.
In my case the computer "freeze" was CPU busy. Not the network throughput. Trust me. I have been a computer programmer and technical support for over 20 years. I have a CCNA and a MCSE. I know a little bit about computers and networks.
They are custom indicators that are based on Bollinger Bands. BB uses standard deviations. Squareroot of summation of square of differences. The squareroot is CPU intensive. And I am doing it on high periodicities on 42 tick charts and 1min chart.
With my new computer based on i7-930, problem solved.
I didn't intend to direct my comments directly to you. I was referencing the problem with your post and making a general comment to other ETers who might be wondering how powerful a computer they might need for trading... Depends upon what they're running, as you already know.
Fair enough. If you view it as a chore, it's worthwhile to have a professional shop do it for you. Otherwise, I do find it more economical and even faster to do it yourself. It took me 2.5 hours to put the box together and I actually could have done it in an hour if I had not made a mistake at first.
I bought all my components from the same shop and has some prior from before. As long as I realized savings from a few key components, it made my whole box a great deal.
It's a lot easier than people think.
Has anyone used Nvidia Quadro NVS 420 or 450 or ATI FirePro Multi-View 2450 or 2460? Each card is supposed to support up to 4 monitors.
ATI Radeon⢠HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition supports up to 6 monitors...
2, NVS 295s (dual head) are a much better choice because of price, if your mobo will accommodate.
That's a good point. However, more expensive a card may still be a better option than USB-to-DVI adapters. When Nvidia Quadro NVS 450 came out quite a few users had problems with the card not recognising all of the monitors, which required multiple reboots to fix the issue. It's possible that drivers have improved since that time though.
There are some mobo's with x16 slots which SHOULD run quad video cards... but, they don't. Personally, I'd avoid quads except where there is no choice.
One would never run a "USB-DVI" monitor except on a notebook where there are no video card options.