tradingcomputers.com. have i just been played for the fool?

Quote from Rob227:

I've always found building a system to be the way to go just because the prepackaged models have little to no upgrade capability. If you are lucky you might be able to put an additional ram card in but that's about it. I suppose it depends what you're using it for but even basic features like loading web pages are clearly faster on a better system.

It also seems for me anyway that I get about twice the time out of a personally built custom machine than a prepackaged one because the time is considerably longer before the system becomes redundantly slow due to the higher end parts and upgradability.

It's really not that hard to put a system together if you're willing to spend a few hours assembling and reading the instructions. After the initial build you'll realize it's pretty straightforward to do yourself.

I stick with well known manufacturers for parts and I haven't had any problems. I like Asus for the motherboard, Nvidia for the video card, Intel for the processor, the rest just a reasonably well known brand.

All you need to build your own system:

Case with lots of cooling fans
Motherboard (lots of upgradability and open slots, space for at least two video cards)
Processor
Ram (pick MB that has room for lots)
Video card
Power supply
Hard drive
Dvd drive

Buy your monitor at Best Buy or something like that.
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I disagree with this. Dell & HP make excellent workstations and desktops that are equally expandable as a custom machine. It's about buying the right tool for the job. The machine that usually runs my TV to watch movies is an old Dell Optiplex 755 Ultra-Small-Form-Factor - it isn't very upgradable or expandable but I don't need it to be.

On the other hand, Dell & HP also make workstations with dual socket motherboards and use server-grade parts. These towers range from the average desktop size to being a little massive and overwhelming - but they have capacity to put plenty of HDD, video cards, memory upgrades, etc.

I have found that they last a lot longer than many other custom solutions simply because KISS - you can't mess with the BIOS in a Dell or HP machine so you can't overclock or tweak or whatever so things simply stay as they were designed and intended and run very well.



Regarding these tradingcomputers.com/falcon:

The reason why the Falcon systems keep crashing is that they over-clock the CPU and the RAM. They don't have the fastest components out there - they just take normal parts and overclock the crap out of them. Spend 5 minutes on a forum like overclock.net and you'll see pages upon pages of crash threads.

Maybe they have changed over the last few years (like 24 months) but as of the Falcon pre-i7 machines (like E8400 or Q9650) they were all just overclocked and overpriced boxes with pretty lights and a reputation for crashing. Personally I think lights like that are annoying.

In my opinion that's reckless and dangerous to be trading or running any type of mission critical application on something that's not a solid & sound platform.
 
Quote from WinstonTJ:

I disagree with this. Dell & HP make excellent workstations and desktops that are equally expandable as a custom machine. It's about buying the right tool for the job. The machine that usually runs my TV to watch movies is an old Dell Optiplex 755 Ultra-Small-Form-Factor - it isn't very upgradable or expandable but I don't need it to be.

On the other hand, Dell & HP also make workstations with dual socket motherboards and use server-grade parts. These towers range from the average desktop size to being a little massive and overwhelming - but they have capacity to put plenty of HDD, video cards, memory upgrades, etc.

I have found that they last a lot longer than many other custom solutions simply because KISS - you can't mess with the BIOS in a Dell or HP machine so you can't overclock or tweak or whatever so things simply stay as they were designed and intended and run very well.





Regarding these tradingcomputers.com/falcon:

The reason why the Falcon systems keep crashing is that they over-clock the CPU and the RAM. They don't have the fastest components out there - they just take normal parts and overclock the crap out of them. Spend 5 minutes on a forum like overclock.net and you'll see pages upon pages of crash threads.

Maybe they have changed over the last few years (like 24 months) but as of the Falcon pre-i7 machines (like E8400 or Q9650) they were all just overclocked and overpriced boxes with pretty lights and a reputation for crashing. Personally I think lights like that are annoying.

In my opinion that's reckless and dangerous to be trading or running any type of mission critical application on something that's not a solid & sound platform.
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Ditto. I too have been trying to tell 'em... but they don't want to listen.

(Dell and HP have virtually identical workstation models. Both mobos made by Foxconn... wouldn't b surprised to see they are to identical specs. Dell's, however, are generally a few $hundred less cost.)
 
Quote from traderharley:

I took Scataphagos's recommendation and bought Dell T3500 with W3690 CPU for $900, it runs great!
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$900? I never saw such a deal.

Newegg sells that CPU alone for $1,085.
 
Hello all ET members,

In earlier posts I mentioned that we have multiple tradingcomputers.com boxes here. We still have them hooked up to 6 monitors and they work great.

With all the talk about DELL in this forum, I thought I'd also mention that we have multiple Dell Optiplex 990's here that come preconfigured for 4 monitors if you order it with the Dual 512MB AMD Radeon HD 6350 Dual VGA graphics card.

This box is less than $800.00 and is the perfect fit for those looking for a preconfigured box that supports multiple monitors. Just don't ask Dell about mulitple monitors, they don't know anything. It has to be the Optiplex 990 with the above mentioned card from what I've found.

Hope this helps those of you searching for a trading box.
 
Quote from WinstonTJ:

I disagree with this. Dell & HP make excellent workstations and desktops that are equally expandable as a custom machine.
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Well, I've griped about this before. I have a three-year-old HP Pavilion Elite d5000t ATX which came with a Burbank-GL8E board. I tried to replace the CPU cooler with a silent one. The stock cooler has a fan that is screwed to the heat sink which in turn is attached to the board with thin screws. The screw holes in the board are too narrow to accommodate any silent coolers that I have found. I even tried using the HP screws with a new cooler to no avail. I have been unable to find a silent cooler that would fit. And apparently there are no silent heat-sink fans (without the heat sink). All I can find are 80 x 80 three-pin case fans, not the needed four-pin CPU fan. (If someone knows of such a fan I would be grateful for the information.)

Anyway, the point is the proprietary size of the holes in the HP board. Something you likely wouldn't think about or ask about when you make a purchase.
 
Quote from J.P.:

Well, I've griped about this before. I have a three-year-old HP Pavilion Elite d5000t ATX which came with a Burbank-GL8E board. I tried to replace the CPU cooler with a silent one. The stock cooler has a fan that is screwed to the heat sink which in turn is attached to the board with thin screws. The screw holes in the board are too narrow to accommodate any silent coolers that I have found. I even tried using the HP screws with a new cooler to no avail. I have been unable to find a silent cooler that would fit. And apparently there are no silent heat-sink fans (without the heat sink). All I can find are 80 x 80 three-pin case fans, not the needed four-pin CPU fan. (If someone knows of such a fan I would be grateful for the information.)

Anyway, the point is the proprietary size of the holes in the HP board. Something you likely wouldn't think about or ask about when you make a purchase.
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ask on www.silentpcreview.com
 
Quote from J.P.:

Well, I've griped about this before. I have a three-year-old HP Pavilion Elite d5000t ATX which came with a Burbank-GL8E board. I tried to replace the CPU cooler with a silent one. The stock cooler has a fan that is screwed to the heat sink which in turn is attached to the board with thin screws. The screw holes in the board are too narrow to accommodate any silent coolers that I have found. I even tried using the HP screws with a new cooler to no avail. I have been unable to find a silent cooler that would fit. And apparently there are no silent heat-sink fans (without the heat sink). All I can find are 80 x 80 three-pin case fans, not the needed four-pin CPU fan. (If someone knows of such a fan I would be grateful for the information.)

Anyway, the point is the proprietary size of the holes in the HP board. Something you likely wouldn't think about or ask about when you make a purchase.
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The Pavilion is a retail product. #1 idk why you would need a silent CPU fan - but #2, that's in the home/retail (albeit high-end home/retail) product line.

Look at the HP Workstation line - click on Small to Medium Business and search those machines.


http://shopping1.hp.com/is-bin/INTE...BPublicStore-workstations&hiderightpanel=true

They don't want you messing with the CPU fan. It was designed that way (to be active cooled) and if you swap it over to passive cooled it'll probably overheat and cause you failures which will be out of warranty if you get caught modding your PC.
 
I emailed their generic sales line and they said that all models are overclocked except for the V12 which is an i5/i7 model (probably because they buy the cheaper "locked" CPUs).

That V12 model "Price as customized" is just over $2000 and I could make that same machine for easily half that price. Also - don't be fooled by their warranty. Most of the parts all come with 3-5 year warranties so them selling you a "platinum 3-year warranty" is total BS IMHO.

They are making a killing selling unstable, overclocked hardware.

If you need a 3.0ghz processor you are MUCH better off to buy a 3.0ghz processor rather than buy a 2.33ghz and overclock it.

Even Intel's manufacturing processes aren't perfect at the 32nm architecture level so every chip comes out different from the dies. They test them and see where & how they perform. In many instances a 2.33ghz CPU could have come off the line right in between two 2.66 or 2.97ghz CPUs. This isn't always the case, quite often they will make a production run of 2.33ghz CPUs (and just lock/flash them down to 2.33 when they can run at 2.97 - this is why the overclock guys go nuts over certain sets of serial numbers, etc) but they also will underclock a CPU down to the least common denominator so that it performs flawlessly vs. risk issues of overheat or failure.

When you overclock a CPU you are taking a big risk because Intel didn't feel it could run at a higher speed. That's pretty simple to me.

Same thing for the memory manufacturers - they overclock the whole machine, memory, north bridge, cpu, etc.
 
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