I'm not far from having to be committed - I just can't take it anymore.
I need a new computer for my latest endeavour, trading. As in stocks, currencies, options, etc. It needs to be fairly fast, upgradeable, and most importantly reliable.
I know a fair amount, much more than the average person, about computers but I have to admit I'm stumped here. The more I read and learn, the more indecisive and confused I become. Obviously, I want to keep it reasonably priced, though I'll pay what I need to get it done right.
I'm expecting it to be between $1200 and $1500, without the monitors, but what do I know.
It has to be able to support multiple monitors, possibly up to 6 or 8, but only 2 to 4 right now.
Here's what I am leaning toward that I think I have figured out. Please tell me if I do, or don't.
Core 2 Duo E6600
XFX PVT73GUGD3 Geforce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card For the dual DVI out's, and it will be easy to add another in SLI mode for 4 monitors Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
2x 19"Samsung Widescreen LCD Monitor 940BW
Antec Performance I P180B Black Case Probably. I don't think this matters much except for my tastes, except if I may have trouble fitting anything or there might be some conflict I'm unaware of, please let me know.
That's what I think I have figured out. What's troubling me at this point are 3 things.
Power Supply
Motherboard
Ram
I understand the situation as me needing at least a 650W PSU. I know that you don't skimp on this component, but I have no idea what brands are reputable. Also I like the modular cables I have seen advertised as they look like they make for a much cleaner and tidy install.
I want to have a good board that's the most capable. Right now, I have no plans to overclock, but may in the future. I think I should go with 975X chipset (?) so that I might have the possibility of upgrading to a Core 2 Quad later, but as I understand it, that may or may not happen. Obviously it needs to be SLI.
I'd like it have the potential to use DDR2 800, but I'm unsure if the performance gained from this is worth the price. I have no idea about how to judge or compare the latency and timings, or which brands are good.
I don't play games, but mainly because I haven't had a system capable in a really long time. It's for this reason that I might consider overclocking, or because I may buy another CPU in the future, and would use this one to build another system around. I would probably do video work like DVD encoding and such on it though. Also, some of the applications for trading are neural networks that can be pretty CPU intensive.
I've gone from planning on just buying a budget $500 system, to buying a premade basic sytem that I would scavenge a few select parts to build my trading computer, then replacing the borrowed parts with some cheaper components so that I would have 2 new computers. Now I'm thinking I'll just buy what I need now, and wait a few months before deciding about another computer since I don't have to have it right now.
I'm basically suffering from analysis paralysis and information overload. Please help keep me out of a straightjacket.
How would you support 6 to 8 monitors with a G965 ?
Hagbard,
This forum is purely game & performance oriented, not the best place to look for a machine you would need, with tremendous screen estate.
You're like those guys you sometimes see on tv with 3, 6 or 8 screens in front of them, following hundreds of indices.. never quite understood it, but i always liked your displays..
What you would need is a matrox card, such as the parhelia, with up to 2 digital video outpus, or 3 analog.
Notice their dualhead or triplehead 2Go series, which can with only one video out, span your desktop along two or three screens.
Combine two parhelia cards, with 4 dualhead2go (triplehead would be, well, too much), and you will have 8 (or twelve with triplehead) displays with a 1280x1024 résolution.
At my work, we have a tree connected to each computer (4 20.1" LCD monitors in a sort of huge square) and we use Matrox cards running off of Dell workstations. I'm not exactly sure what Matrox cards we use since I don't work in IS, but the tree displays work really well, and the cards are decently cheap since their not designed to play games, just view multiple monitors.
I don't know if you want to get something like the tree, but I could try to find out where we get all that stuff from.
