The workstation

ilia king

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Hi everyone I was wondering what type of PC people have got for there 5min trading, I'll start off with mine.

Custom Built, Intel MotherBoar: DB845EPT
P4, 2.56, strong fan (Never gonna get P5 as you will need water cooling or it will overheat)
512MB 2100 ram (slow but useful)
Two Acer 18" moniters
Rubbish Graphics Card which I am too embarrased about to mention as it hardly supports the two screens! :eek: :eek: :eek:
Wireless Mouse (with custom buttons)
Wireless Keyboard (with customs buttons)
Extra mouse + keyboard
The worlds worst Broadband = Tiscali, slower than modem, Dailup BT for backup.
Cool neon lights in case to make look more interesting :cheesy:

Mines not very reliable, but works, need to get a UPS and laptop for backup :!:

Cheers

Ilia
 
Hi Ilia,

I have a two computer setup.

1) P4 2.8 ghz, 1 GB Ram, 1 15" monitor.
2) P4 3.4 ghz, 1 GB Ram, 1 15" monitor, 160 GB hard drive with 8mb casche.

I use AOL 1mb broadband (crap but am tied in for another 8 months).

BT dial up as backup.

I use the first computer for charts and other data software, and use the second computer for trading softeare and programme trading.

cheers

Sanj.
 
Main: AMD 2400 XP+/1Gb DDR333/40Gb DMA100 HDD, 17" LCD screen at 1280 x 1024
Wifi'd network: There's an AMD XP1900 (512 Mb Ram)/40Gb HDD 15" LCD, an AMD XP+ 2000 (I like Athlons ;) ) 40Gb (bought a few identical drives en bloc)/17" CRT, and a Pentium M1400 Laptop, 15" screen etc.
Dave
(Don't get me started on printers...)
 
Thanks for everyone who has posted, DaveJB and Sanj. I couldn't reply because my Internet Connection was down. TISCALI are a load of (you know what). I am getting the idea that everyone has a backup system. Also the some are going into 3. GHZ, which I would think is a bit risky as you would need a strong fan. But then again any thoughts greatly appreciated
 
Hi ilia king, i was aways told buy the best spec you can afford as it will last a few years without needing any upgrades, but in the real world you only need a high spec pc for games, for trading i use a 1700 celeron , 512 ram, 2 19" crt's and a 17" tft, and broadband thats ample i can run tradestaion 2000i, ib screen, and surf the net all at the same time , no glitches and runs sweat, collecting data does not require a big machine my last pc was a p100 running real time slow but done the job.

Regards Mark
 
Marky,

V. good points. I agree totally. There is a danger of peeps having 'all the gear but no idea'.
 
In my view it depends on what you are trading. If you only want to trade one instrument (maybe the S&P future), then a low spec pc is more than adequate.

There are friends of mine who are still trading the ES, NQ and FTSE future using a 133Mhz CPU on Windows 98 with only 32Mb or RAM. They use a dial up connection and still have 3 charts with their trading platform running. They are consistently profitable and dont have any relaibility issues that I am aware of.

This would obviously not be adequate if you are going to need to scan a large number of instruments or need to run a large number of applications.

I think it is horses for courses with trading.



Paul
 
I would agree with Paul, however would the scanning in Tradestation and Metastock need such an extreme pc? I am not talking about good PCs (512mb, 2.6ghz, 80gb) but about the the 3.5's, as in my case my friends system is running at a temp. of 49 degrees - It is lucky that he is not a stock broker because his system would not be reliable even though he has a top spec pc, the only solution would to be using watercooling. Also has anyone heard about the nitrogen cooling on a 6ghz I think
 
IK - why not organise a vote on traders' workstation spec?

It'll give a general idea just what sort of platform people are using.
 
Bramble an excellent idea but I am not that good on polls. Would I have options like:

Newest High Tec PC (3ghz+, 1GB 3200 Ram, 120GB Harddisk)
High Tec Pc (2.5ghz+, 512MB 2100 Ram, 60 Harddisk)
Normal PC(1ghz+, 128MB Ram, 30 Harddisk)
Oldish PC (<1ghz, <128MB Ram, <30GB Harddisk)
Ancient PC (!)

However I wouldn't think that some people would be honest about it. Should I go into more detail with the specifications.

Thanks

Ilia
 
Would be Interesting to know how many monitors people have got, I have personally got two
 
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