High-end PC for Trading

A

andysmith99

I'm buying a high-end desktop PC mainly for trading purposes. On a typical day, I have these apps running simultaneously on THREE 1920x1200 monitors:

- thinkorswim (realtime quotes with 0 seconds delay, several charts, several chart grids, many watchlists, custom thinkscript indicators)
- IB with chart grids
- Firefox browser
- Video (CNBC, youtube, etc)
- Document editing
- Outlook for email
- I have a solid 20 Mbps internet connection

My current PC is a high-end laptop and it's choking these days, mainly due to my heavy thinkorswim usage. The desktop PC I'm considering:

- Intel 4-core i7-6700 CPU at 3.4GHz
- 16GB RAM (DDR4)
- 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card (to drive 3 monitors at 1920x1200)
- 512GB SSD (solid state drive)
- Solid power supply and cooling
- Windows 10

Can anyone comment on how performance might be? Or perhaps this is overkill? Or maybe the mix of components is "out-of-whack" for the apps I run? Or maybe that monster of a graphics card will not help for non-3D apps like thinkorswim? I'm new to this but have spent time reading... but still, new to this!

Thanks
Andy
 
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how much RAM do you have now? TOS is a massive ram hog so this is going to be the differentiating factor, the rest of the equipment is good enough for your needs.
 
rolando87 said:
how much RAM do you have now? TOS is a massive ram hog so this is going to be the differentiating factor, the rest of the equipment is good enough for your needs.
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My current setup has 4GB RAM. It's a Windows Vista laptop and I've added another 4GB using a ReadyBoost USB drive, but I don't think it helps. By the way, the java requirements on TOS limits its RAM usage to less than 1.5GB, isn't that correct?
 
Well if that's true about the 1.5 limit then 16gb should be enough, otherwise you may want to crank it up to 20 or 24, if you're maxing out at 8gb right now.

A good rule of thumb is the check windows task manager for the Physical Memory % and keep that number under 40% under the max loads. Anything over 60 or 70% and you start seeing noticeable decreases in performance.
 
rolando87 said:
Well if that's true about the 1.5 limit then 16gb should be enough, otherwise you may want to crank it up to 20 or 24, if you're maxing out at 8gb right now.

A good rule of thumb is the check windows task manager for the Physical Memory % and keep that number under 40% under the max loads. Anything over 60 or 70% and you start seeing noticeable decreases in performance.
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That's good advice - I've seen my Physical Memory % at 95%+ and CPU usage at 100% from time to time!
 
IAS_LLC said:
If you are at all technologically inclined... consider building one. It will save you money and you will get exactly what you want.

Here is a decent reference build:
http://pcpartpicker.com/b/gPd6Mp
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Thanks for the suggestion, I am extremely tempted (but thinking about the commissions and slippage of family time). In any case, the system I described is under $1000, pre-built. The pcpartpicker link is interesting. I'm still trying to figure out whether a 6-core i7-5820k is more beneficial than a 4-core i7-6700K for trading apps. I'm getting mixed replies on whether TOS is multi-threaded.
 
Those specs are fine but don't neglect other important points:

- ADSL connection ( velocity, quality...etc )
- Your automatic Strategies processing required times ( more if you're day-trading )
 
andysmith99 said:
Thanks for the suggestion, I am extremely tempted (but thinking about the commissions and slippage of family time). In any case, the system I described is under $1000, pre-built. The pcpartpicker link is interesting. I'm still trying to figure out whether a 6-core i7-5820k is more beneficial than a 4-core i7-6700K for trading apps. I'm getting mixed replies on whether TOS is multi-threaded.
More...

I'm not sure if it is or not, but you are multitasking... So the twelve hyperthreads from the 5820k should work better than the 8 with the 6700k. Additionally, the 5820k has nearly twice as much cache...this may or may not result in better performance...depends how the software is written from a memory management perspective.
 
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