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

[Mr_You]

I would recommend considering the AMD/ATI 2460 display port graphics card. Passively cooled (quiet), low power, 4 displays capable. You really don't need an actively cooled graphics card for trading. They run about $250 or less.

I also think a dual-socket motherboard is a bit overkill for discretionary trading. I would go for a single socket motherboard with a quad-core CPU and with the money saved add as much RAM as possible: 16GB-32GB. Asus is a good brand for motherboard. Check out the Sabertooth Z77, but generally all their models are pretty good. Crucial is a good RAM manufacturer.

Definitely get an SSD. Use a larger traditional HD for backups if needed.

Keep in mind the less cooling fans you'll need the quieter the machine will be. Buzzing fans can get old quick. Even on laptops.

 

[WinstonTJ]

For full disclosure, I was running a hex-monitor setup for a while. I built a Frankenstein Ergotron setup using a single upright pole and two triple arms. Ergotron says not to hang that much weight and space on a single base - but it was only 6x 20" Dell square monitors.

I still think that the square monitors are better than widescreen however they are all but gone.

To get over many of the issues you have surrounding running that many monitors, keyboard sharing, etc. I used remote desktop. My build was as follows (I'll try to find some pictures, somewhere):

One single Dell Precision T5500 Workstation with two NVIDIA NVS 420 quad-cards, 48GB of RAM, TWO Intel Xeon X5580 CPUs (dual quad core @ 3.2ghz), OS on WD Raptor 160gb HDD (in software RAID1) and two WD Black 1TB drives (also in RAID1). That was the base machine. (Windows-7 64-bit + Office 2007)


On that main machine I ran Bloomberg, Excel and my OMS/Risk but not execution.

I then had 6-8 other machines (some rack servers some desktop towers) sitting in the telco closet and/or next to my desk. I would Remote Desktop (RDP) into the other machines and control them from my main workstation at my desk.

Trading, execution, backtesting, optimization & computer/server management/network/firewaling, etc. all ran on the remote machines. The remote machines ranged from simple quad-core desktop machines to fully rack mounted quad-socket servers.


For comparison, my six 20" dell & EIZO monitors (I had two exact hex-monitor setups at home and at the office) they were both about the same space as four 24" monitors.

What I like about the 6 smaller monitors (I still run three 19" square monitors today) is that the remote desktop sessions and maximized windows fill a screen well. When you maximize a browser or any other window on a 24" monitor it is massive. It just simply becomes a royal pain in the a$$ to always be resizing a window or browser. The max/min/"X" buttons are next to each other and it just stinks to accidentally close a window and even will get annoying to minimize a window by accident and then have to scroll down and search to find which window you minimized...

At least if you break up an 8-monitor system into two quads it'll be a nice break to switch from one machine to the next.

 

[Bolimomo]

Quote from WinstonTJ:


You have no idea how hard it is to scroll a mouse from one corner to the next on a setup like that.

There is something called a "trackball". I have multiple 1x8 monitor configurations. Using a trackball, from far left to the far right takes 2 to 3 seconds. Configure the mouse speed to the fastest would help too.

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RE: 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...

Configure the mouse property. You can click on the control key and Windows will flash where the mouse pointer is.

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RE: 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.

I disagree with this about the heat. It only depends on the graphics card model, not quad versus dual. I use a bunch of these:

PNY 8400 GS dual cards, something like this:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/21576598?...1=g&wl2=&wl3=18162232990&wl4=&wl5=pla&veh=sem

(Sorry I incorrectly said "8600GS" upthread). They use very little power and produce very little heat. (Look at how small the card is.)

One card is about $30, bought as new. If you buy a NVS 450 quad card, it's $450. Think about the replacement costs when one of these cards go out.

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I re-iterate what I said upthread: When you have so many monitors packed together, do not use big monitors. 30-inch are way too big. You sit so close to the monitors, you don't need a big monitor to read the details. I recommend the best is about 20" to 21" each.

 

[learner2007]

Given the high level of the contents in this thread, I'm embarrassed to ask such a simple question. While I understand computers, when it comes to graphics cards I've no experience and I'm really lost.

I'm going to replace 2 old Dell Dimension desktops (each has dual monitors) wth 2 Dell 8500's. I'm going to keep the 4 monitors which have 1 DVI and 1 VGA ports. I can choose from the following 3 graphics cards.
AMD Radeon™ HD 7570 1GB (DVI/HDMI)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640 1GB GDDR5
AMD Radeon™ HD 7770 2GB DDR5

I use the computers for stock and futures trading. No gaming, video editing etc.

My question is, for stock charting software is there any benifit in choosing one of the above cards over the others? What I seem to understand from this thread is that for my level of usage even the lowest end card (7570) will be fine and the 640 and 7770 will just be overkill which will show no increase whatsoever in performance over 7570. Would you say that is correct?

Also, I've heard that, while the chances are small, visual and/or settings problems might occur in using a HDMI>DVI adapter setup with 7570. And for that reason 640 or 7770 might be preferable in that they have both DVI and Display ports which would eliminate any possible connection problems with 7570's HDMI. I want to avoid even the smallest problem with the monitors setup as it would be frustrating since I wouldn't know how to fix it. Do you feel that a problem might ocurr in using the HDMI port?

Thank you very much for any advice on these two points that you may provide.

 

[Scataphagos]

1. All of those cards have 10,000X the horsepower you'll ever use in a trading environment.

2. Personally, I'd go for not using adapters if possible. (Adapters almost always work, but still another variable to cause trouble sometimes.) Just run DVI cable from the DVI ports of your monitors to the DVI ports of your video cards... just buy video cards with 2, DVI ports.

If you want to use DP video cards, buy DVI-DP cables so you don't have to use adapters.... or DP-DP cables if your monitors have DP port.

 

[learner2007]

Quote from Scataphagos:

1. All of those cards have 10,000X the horsepower you'll ever use in a trading environment.

2. Personally, I'd go for not using adapters if possible. Just run DVI cable from the DVI ports of your monitors to the DVI ports of your video cards... just buy video cards with 2, DVI ports.

1. Thank you.

2. Those 3 cards are the only ones Dell offers for the 8500 model.
And the 7570 has 1 HDMI and 1 DVI port. So to avoid the HDMI port as you suggest I'll have to go with the 640 which has 1 DVI and 1 DP. And I guess that would be better as someday I'll replace the monitors which will have DVI and DP ports.

Thank you very much for your advice.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from learner2007:

1. Thank you.

2. Those 3 cards are the only ones Dell offers for the 8500 model.
And the 7570 has 1 HDMI and 1 DVI port. So to avoid the HDMI port as you suggest I'll have to go with the 640 which has 1 DVI and 1 DP. And I guess that would be better as someday I'll replace the monitors which will have DVI and DP ports.

Thank you very much for your advice.

HDMI is primarily to connect a computer to a TV.. carries HD sound and video... great for gamers and TV/home theater rigs.

You might consider buying the cheapest card with your rig... and not using it in your trading rig... then buying other, proper cards for a trading environment... many of us use Nvidia NVS 290/295/300, GeForce 8400, FirePro... all more suited to trading setups than what you're offered.

Trading rigs usually run 8-ish hours per day... nice to not have noisy video card fans droning.

Does the computer you're planning to buy have enough PCIE slots to run the number of monitors you want??

 

[learner2007]

Quote from Scataphagos:

HDMI is primarily to connect a computer to a TV.. carries HD sound and video... great for gamers and TV/home theater rigs.

You might consider buying the cheapest card with your rig... and not using it in your trading rig... then buying other, proper cards for a trading environment... many of us use Nvidia NVS 290/295/300, GeForce 8400, FirePro... all more suited to trading setups than what you're offered.

Trading rigs usually run 8-ish hours per day... nice to not have noisy video card fans droning.

Does the computer you're planning to buy have enough PCIE slots to run the number of monitors you want??

Crossed out HDMI! So the cheapest would be the Nvidia640.
I'll definitely look into the cards you recommended when I buy new monitors. The only reason I don't want to buy new monitors now is that the ones I have now are 7 years old but are as sharp as new.

Thank you again.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from learner2007:

Crossed out HDMI! So the cheapest would be the Nvidia640.
I'll definitely look into the cards you recommended when I buy new monitors. The only reason I don't want to buy new monitors now is that the ones I have now are 7 years old but are as sharp as new.

Thank you again.

You don't need new monitors, but you DO need proper video cards and proper motherboard to run a 6-8 monitor rig.

 

[philipjb]

Do you know any website, that has excellent cheap rates, and does International Shipping ?

Quote from teagueAMX:

I'm fairly new to trading, but I've been building hi-end computers for many years. The thing about trading it is not extremely computational intensive. Basically it is receiving a data stream and displaying that data in various formats in 2D. Most of the 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 won't do much for 2d Windows applications.

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 a feature that allows caching of frequently used applications and data. This is the outline of a dedicated trading computer I'm building for myself.

Keep in mind the system memory depends on the motherboard manufacture's compatibility test with their motherboard - so you have to look for a list they publish. This system with tax and shipping will cost around $1500 but it will support up to four monitors, and I can easily add another four port card later.

BTW: I recommend you get a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB or larger HDD, but 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.

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.