Trading Computers

D

D78

New member
I'm in the market for a new trading computer. Would like recommendations of any sort: make, components, software/hardware elements, specialized, off the shelf/custom built etc...

I'm roughly in the mid ($1500-$2500) price range. I run a two monitor setup and find it adequate.

Anybody particularly happy/unhappy with their present setups?

Falcon says TOS needs a higher end graphics card True? Hype?

Thanking you in advance for your ideas and input.

Best,

Dave
 
My system does not have a high end graphics card and TOS runs/displays smoothly all the time. I have a 16 GB ram, i7 processor, 256 GB SSD hard drive and 4 GB video card.
You do not need a $2500 computer for normal retail trading unless you want to develop high frequency ALGOs and more complicated stuff. The emphasis should be to learn the skills to make money in the market place rather than super computers.
 
I recently went through system upgrade as well.
1. Do not buy preassembled systems from popular brands nor from 'trading computers' brands. Assemble it yourself or let comp shop do it for you (price will be about the same - they charge you for labor but they have cheaper parts - if not - look for another shop.)
2. Make sure you really know what you want and let it be your guide, not opinions of others. Is it for trading only, do you use virtual machines, do you game, watch tv etc.
3. Spend time researching critical parts and choose optimal, not the best choices, unless it makes you mentally discomfortable to have 'lesser' machine. In that case you have to pay up.
4. Make sure you tweak your rig properly.

In past I used high end machines with specific requirements, so I felt this discomfort for a while when I decided to go with i-5 not with the newest cheepset. After few months I have no regrets at all (I do not game). For trading I recommend video card capable of handling 4 monitors even if you think you need only two. Yes, you can always add another card later on, make sure you have open slots for that, but I prefer do it right from start. I have 1T SSD but I needed it for data handling, 256 (with additional HDD if needed) should be fine. I also started with 16 GB RAM and it was mistake, but this is only because I run VMs. For TOS it should be enough. TOS does require better than normal video card but there is no need for cutting edge even if they tech support says so - any complains about TOS sluggishness are usually answered this way. Problem with TOS is with so called 'garbage collection' and it is more Java problem than TOS itself. Do research, if it bothers you a lot, there are some works around that can be tried out. Anyway 16GB for TOS should be plenty, just set TOS properly.
And make sure you gave decent power supply.
All this can be achieved around or even below $1500.

This is only my advice, you are the one to decide here. I absolutely agree with what JackW said in the last sentence.
 
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i agree with others, that you don't need a high end cpu or high end graphics to run thinkorswim.
i run it on a 12 year old notebook and it's fine. the extra money for a solid state disk is worth it.
spend your money on the fastest memory and fastest disk. today's mid-range processors are
very fast. i'm using a mid-range notebook cpu and it's fast enough. i run virtual machines,
trading software, and do software development and have no problems.

when i built mine i went for small size, no noise and no heat. i would say a 1 TB ssd
is not over-kill. if you run windows, over time, it will eat up a large portion of disk space.

16GB of ram should be more than enough for now but if you plan on keeping the system for
a long time, it might be advisable to have memory expansion capability. if you use an on-board
graphics chip it will share some of the system memory.
 
In another life, I used to build and sell computers. These days I don't want the hassle of building it myself so I tend to buy a built system. My favorite place to buy a system is velocity micro ( https://www.velocitymicro.com/ ).

I used to tell people to spend money on the components that are more difficult to upgrade later. Typically the motherboard and CPU. The graphics board is probably on that list too since they can be pricey and you hate to spend a few hundred dollars on a video board only to have to replace it later with a more expensive one. I have a GeForce GTC 1070 board that supports four monitors. It's a gaming board (I don't play games on my PC) You can find other boards that support four monitors.

I like lots of RAM so I have 32GB of ram and a 1TB SSD. My current drive is using 384GB. Check the properties of your drive now to see what you are actually using and add a buffer to figure out what size you should get.

For most people, 16GB of ram is plenty. I suspect 256GB SSD would be enough too but as Jim mentioned above, 1TB is good for future proofing yourself.

Here are a few links you might find useful:

https://www.newegg.com/

https://pcpartpicker.com/

https://www.velocitymicro.com/
 
I appreciate everyone's comments. No one has mentioned operating systems. Does Win10pro offer any advantage over Win10home for a trading rig?
 
i know this isn't a viable option for everyone, but if you don't absolutely need windows
i would recommend using linux. linux is faster, more secure, has fewer bugs, uses fewer resources,
and best of all it's free. an added bonus you don't have to put up with microsoft. i would recommend
ubuntu. thinkorswim runs fine on it but the major problem with it is you lose dde, rtd, and vba.

but getting back to your question, windows 10 pro isn't necessary for a trading computer. the main things
you get with windows pro is bitlocker encryption, remote login, ability to connect to domains, hyper-v for
virutal machines, and some advanced system management tools. you don't need hyper-v to run
virtual machines. vmware has a very good free virtual machine creator/viewer. you can do remote
desktop with vnc. i'm sure you can find 3rd party encryption tools if you need that. i use linux for my trading
system and have a windows laptop for use when i need rtd. i also have a windows 7 virtual machine
i can run on linux when necessary.
 
Thank you for your thoughtful answer, Jim.

Which Linux distribution do you use?

I have limited experience with the operating system, running Linux Ubuntu in my music studio. I assume I'd need to run TOS in something like Wine, is that correct?

Dave
 
Dave, Win pro or Win home - just find comparison side-by-side list on line, you'll have everything plainly laid out.

To your question: no, you dont need Wine, TOS runs directly in Linux.

I back everything Jim said abut Linux. I'd suggest Mint. This is Ubuntu based distro and is of vanilla kind. That means it will be easiest to switch for Windows user. If you can you may setup look and behavior of Linux to match Windows. Just be aware that Linux is not Windows. There are differences that might be annoying for Win user but also there is much more open possibilities. You should lean basics but even if you are not willing to do so, Linux will offer you much more out of the box, even if you are not aware of it. This is especially true about security; people usually don't care about security (even if they say they do) Linux is much more secure out of the box (just don't to stupid things) but even Linux is not completely waterproof.
Big downsides for trader are lack of rtd mechanism in Open Office (this is strictly related to security) and no commercial backtesting software for Linux, both ONE an OV have only Win versions to my knowledge. You don't want to use Wine (again - security reasons), you use virtual machine for example VrtualBox - if you have SSD there is no problem whatsoever, with HDD, waiting for windows to start up is pretty annoying.
You can use Virtual Box on Windows to install and play with Linux or you can just prepare flash drive with Linux (easy to do) boot computer from this drive and take a look this way. Eventually you probably will install Linux along Windows... and you will forgot about Windows altogether :)

I suggest Mint but you can go with Ubuntu, RedHat, Fedora, Suse... whatever you want, even may try Arch :). I heard that Elementary is very good too.
Now, if you decide for Mint there are many windows managers it comes with. Windows managers are generally speaking GUI for system - in Windows you have only one option, so there is no confusion (and no choice), with Linux there are many options. Standard is Cinamon, very good one especially for modern computers, there is KDE where you have so many options that you have to spend a year to learn it alone (exaggerating a bit). There are others like Mate and Xfce - very neat and robust window managers that are said to be for old computers (very low requirements for CPU and Mem) but I use Xfce for years and have no need for whistles and blowers - this is personal preference.
So if you are about to spend time with new machine I strongly suggest to give Linux a try - this is optimal time to do so (if you know for sure, you can save couple bucks buying rig without any operating system).

Good luck.
 
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D78 said:
Which Linux distribution do you use?

I have limited experience with the operating system, running Linux Ubuntu in my music studio. I assume I'd need to run TOS in something like Wine, is that correct?
Click to expand...

i use ubuntu linux. redhat isn't free, but their community supported version, fedora is, but it's
only supported for 2 years. ubuntu has an lts version that's supported for 5 years. you don't want to
ever use a non-supported operating system. i also don't like upgrading every year or two. usually with
linux, upgrades are painless but there's always the possibility of something going wrong.

thinkorswim is written in java so it runs natively on any operating system that has java support.
likewise, tastyworks is java. etrade, which bought trademonster, has an html5 platform that also
runs natively on linux.
 
As far as good service and support goes (the original question about trading computers), I have used EZ trading computers for my desktop and laptop and am very pleased with their support and service.
 
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