Help me to build 6-8 monitor trading battle station :)

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philipjb

Ok Experts.
Help me out.

To brief it out, i think i have to buy the following, help me if i missed anything.

1) Intel i7 3930 Processor
2) Motherboard: Which brand and spec i should go for, i am confused..
2) Crosair 12 GB Ram.. is it good, or which one is best ?
3) Seagate 2 TB HDD.. is it good, or which one is best ?
4) Graphic Card.. which one i should go for please?
5) Power Supply.. which one should i go for ?

6 or 8 Monitors.. Which brand.. I am thinking for LED monitors.. Which specs, make you think is good?

Which one are the bloomberg monitors, are they custom bloomberg monitors?
 
Quote from philipjb:

Ok Experts.
Help me out.

To brief it out, i think i have to buy the following, help me if i missed anything.

1) Intel i7 3930 Processor
2) Motherboard: Which brand and spec i should go for, i am confused..
2) Crosair 12 GB Ram.. is it good, or which one is best ?
3) Seagate 2 TB HDD.. is it good, or which one is best ?
4) Graphic Card.. which one i should go for please?
5) Power Supply.. which one should i go for ?

6 or 8 Monitors.. Which brand.. I am thinking for LED monitors.. Which specs, make you think is good?

Which one are the bloomberg monitors, are they custom bloomberg monitors?
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Dell u2711 or u3011.

I paid $800 shipped with tax, and $1300 .

Digitaltiger.com or is it digitaltigers.com has some great setups that will give u ideas.

Logicbuy.com is where i kept checking for dell deals.
 
Quote from philipjb:

I am looking for UnBranded.
I am not in States..
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Trading is not extremely computational intensive per se. Basically it is receiving a data stream and displaying that data in various formats in 2D.

Having said that, the Windows operating system and the applications you use are the biggest demand on the CPU. So, having a fast cpu and memory is great. The latest Intel Z77 chipset, among other things has features that allows caching of frequently used applications and data and really improves computer performance when flipping between windows. System memory depends on the motherboard manufacture's compatibility test with their motherboard - so you have to look for a list they publish.

Most of the better video cards on the market have huge amounts of fast DDR5 memory and parallel processing capacity, but those cards are designed to accelerate 3d graphics and don't accelerate 2d Windows application display. The video card listed below support 4 monitors and accelerates 2d Windows applications. Plus it adds the ability to have multiple task bars, and divide up the screen areas (i.e., when you max a window it's confined to a grid) . You can get it for about $340 US which is the same price or less than 2 each 3d gaming graphics processing units (gpu). Power consumption is very low.

I recommend you get a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB or larger HDD. Huge amounts of data storage is not a major issue a trading computer. The Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F90GB3-BK will be my boot drive and the Western Digital Caviar Black will be used to team with the caching SDD.

Here is the outline for my computer. This system with tax and shipping will cost around $1500 - $1700 US but it will support up to four monitors, and I can easily add another four port card later.

Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770

ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
. or
ASUS P8Z77 WS LGA 1155 Intel Z77 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified power supply

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

Crucial Adrenaline CT050M4SSC2BDA 50GB Solid State Cache SSD

Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F90GB3-BK 2.5" 90GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

PNY VCQ450NVS-X16-PB Quadro NVS 450 512MB

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - OEM

ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner

Case, keyboard, and mouse, of your choice

I really like the ASUS P8Z77 WS because it is a no-nonsense mb designed for workstation computers with dual server grade nics, but the SABERTOOTH has a pretty good dependability track record so I'll likely end up going with the SABERTOOTH for that reason and it's a $100 US less than the P8Z77.

FWIW

Cheers.
 
They list the main components in use. you can figure out the rest required.
It'll give you some ideas.

Quote from philipjb:

I am looking for UnBranded.
I am not in States..
More...
 
The Quadro NVS 450 cards, bought new, are expensive. From what I see, $450 for each card for supporting 4 monitors. 2 of these, it is almost the price of the computer. If you are not using the high-res 2560x1600 monitors, you may be paying a lot more for what you don't need.

If you are using only 1920x1080 monitors, I suggest to consider used NVS 290, 295, etc on EBay. $20

http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Dell-NVIDIA...AM-PCI-Express-x16-Graphics-adapter-/73856463

Or buy some inexpensive Nvidia 8600GS dual cards (probably $30 each as new). It won't make any difference in supporting your 2D price charts.


But you would need 4 of those, as each one supports 2 monitors. If so, you also need to make sure you pick a motherboard that supports >= 4 PCIe X16 slots.


For monitors: I have been using a few Acer S211HL 21.5" LED monitor (resolution 1920x1080). I love them They are light, bright, and use very little power. When I bought them a year or so ago, they were at $130. I suspect prices may have improved or there are better models on the market. One advice from my experience: when you set up as many as 8 monitors in an array, don't pick 24-inch or above. They may be priced lower even and look nice, when you put so many big size monitors together you are sacrificing physical space. And the heat can be bad. Use 21" or 22", but make sure the monitor supports 1920x1080 at a minimum.

Also read my reply on the other thread about the ergonomic aspects of setting up 6 to 8+ monitors.
 
i'd stay away from digital tigers. try dell outlet instead.

bloomberg has custom monitors built for them - you can't get one unless you have a terminal. the monitor is basically a regular lcd w/ the bloomberg on the bottom right hand anyways.
 
Quote from philipjb:Ok Experts.
Help me out.
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Are you building a trading "battle station" like this for bragging rights or to actually use?

I'd say stick with a quad setup and then if you need more get a second PC and run a second dual/quad monitor setup - if you like the real estate then perhaps think about running a single CPU on 6-8 monitors. You have no idea how hard it is to scroll a mouse from one corner to the next on a setup like that.

The other thing about that much real estate is it allows you to run that many more applications - which is going to be that much more CPU/network/RAM, etc. intensive.

Quote from philipjb:1) Intel i7 3930 Processor
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Decent, I'd get a dual-socket motherboard and run a single hex-core Xeon equivalent. Something like a X5650 or X5690

Quote from philipjb:2) Motherboard: Which brand and spec i should go for, i am confused..
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Anything dual-socket (for the Xeon variant of your i7 CPUs)

Quote from philipjb:12) Crosair 12 GB Ram.. is it good, or which one is best ?
More...
12-gb of RAM is going cheap with a hex-core. You have less than 2GB RAM per core you can allocate. Assuming your motherboard will have two sockets and 6-DIMMs per socket, run one CPU to start and 18GB of RAM (3GB sticks) at first.

Quote from philipjb:3) Seagate 2 TB HDD.. is it good, or which one is best ?
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Run your OS on a SSD. Decent SSD's are cheap these days. Get only 64-128GB for the OS SSD and then use any spinny type of drive you want for the storage space. May want to back up the 2TB HDD or at least run it in RAID1. Do you have any idea how long it takes (even at wire speeds) to restore 2TB of data??

Quote from philipjb:4) Graphic Card.. which one i should go for please?
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I'd say you start with something like an NVS 420 quad-card and then run two of them if you need 6-8 monitors. Going crazy expensive will be a waste on a trading rig. Go older and use two quad cards vs. trying to find a specific motherboard that will have 4x PCIe slots to run 4x dual cards. That will be a disaster in terms of heat as well as controller I/O - it's possible but two quads would be better than four duals.

Quote from philipjb:5) Power Supply.. which one should i go for ?
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Get a chassis with a dual-PSU and then get two of the cheapest PSU's you can find with the longest warranties. There are tons of PSU calculators on the internet. Getting low power video cards will help you out a lot. Whatever the calculator tells you that you "need" go up a few hundred watts above that.

Rough guess is that you'd need/want something in the 750W range - but I have no idea what else you'll be running.

Quote from philipjb:6 or 8 Monitors.. Which brand.. I am thinking for LED monitors.. Which specs, make you think is good?
More...
Good is relative. How much space do you have and what are you going to hang that many monitors on?

I'd suggest getting an ergotron DS100 quad stand and starting out with four monitors. When you are ready buy a second DS100 quad and run that either on a second CPU/computer or on the same bigger box. If you get much over 24" widescreen monitors it's going to be a massive amount of space. 6-8 24"++ monitors is going to be so large that you will lose the mouse on the screen... somewhere...

Quote from philipjb:Which one are the bloomberg monitors, are they custom bloomberg monitors?
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If you have to ask, you can't afford it. You can only get Bloomberg monitors/keyboards with a Bloomberg subscription. They give you the keyboards but if you have been unfortunate enough to lose one or need to pay for a replacement they run about $600.

The monitors are about $1,200 (as of just over a year ago when they were still two side-by-side not the newer ones that run vertical or horizontal, I'd guess they are going to be in the $1,300-$1,400 range - and it's only a DUAL monitor setup since that's all Bloomberg feels you need for a terminal. If you want Bloomberg monitors for all 6-8 screens you'll need to get a $2000/month subscription to Bloomberg as well as shell out for 3-4 $1,300 dual monitor setups.

Just start with a decent quad setup and go from there.
 
+1 on Winstons advice [it is always good]

Dual systems is a good way to go. In addition to what Winston pointed out, you also have redundancy in the event of a hardware failure.

Winston didn't mention keyboard/mouse sharing.

A nice keyboard mouse sharing application, will make them feel like one computer. I use multiplicity, simple to install and use.

http://www.stardock.com/products/multiplicity/

FWIW: I ran in the past 6 ea. 30" monitors and found it overkill, not to mention neck strains when in 3 x 2 configuration. Side by side gave me whiplash with an almost 180° wrap around. More is not always better

Comfortable is 3x30" or 4 x 21"ish

A good way to test prior to buying 8 monitors, is place two monitors at the extreme positions of your desired configuration, i.e. #1 & #8 and spend a day or two bouncing back and forth between the two

You may also consider getting a track ball in lieu of a mouse if you have to span a lot of screens and pixels. [Say good bye to wrist pain]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104249
 
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