Help speccing a trading PC

virtuesoft · 2 Mar 2009 at 16:41

Hi,

I need to build a new PC. I will be using it primarily for trading from home. I have a budget of about £1000, my main requirements are as follows...

I need to be able to hook up three 24 inch monitors initially, however it would be nice to have the flexibility to add a fourth monitor in the future.
It needs to be fairly quick and have quite a bit of RAM as the trading applications I use are quite resource intensive.
It needs to have a fairly large hard drive but nothing mega, probably about 500GB.
I might play some games on it but probably not very often, I'm not too worried about it being a 'Gamer PC' but it would be nice to use it to play games on every now and then.
It needs to be fairly quiet as I will be using it for 8 hours a day whilst working.

The main aspect of the build I'm concerned about is the graphics card and the triple monitor setup. I've never hooked up more than two monitors to a system before so I'm a total newbie.

Any spec recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

jak731 · 2 Mar 2009 at 18:03

assuming you already have the monitors

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £166.74
(£144.99) £166.74
(£144.99)
Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (90-C1CL55-L0UAY00Z) Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (90-C1CL55-L0UAY00Z) £142.59
(£123.99) £142.59
(£123.99)
Abit IP35 Pro XE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard Abit IP35 Pro XE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £59.98
(£52.16) £59.98
(£52.16)
Seasonic Silverpower 500W Power Supply Seasonic Silverpower 500W Power Supply £57.49
(£49.99) £57.49
(£49.99)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD5001AALS) Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD5001AALS) £56.34
(£48.99) £56.34
(£48.99)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £39.09
(£33.99) £78.18
(£67.98)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB "Low Profile" DDR2 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB "Low Profile" DDR2 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £34.49
(£29.99) £34.49
(£29.99)
Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £31.04
(£26.99) £31.04
(£26.99)
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.54
(£16.99) £19.54
(£16.99)
Sub Total : £562.07
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL @ Home Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.99
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £85.81
Total : £657.87

add case

you can change the processor to a q9550 if you want/need SSE4 instructions and other features it has

you could get a different Motherboard, as abit are no longer maunfacturing motherboards.

the tuniq tower is optional, as it offers a quiter cooler.

8GB of RAM as that is the most amount of RAM the motherboard can support.

even though gaming isnt the main purpose of the pc ,i specced you a 4850 as your primary card as this will allow you to play most games out at a reasonable quality. the 4350 will run your 3rd and 4th monitor

quad core as i assume you will be multitasking a lot.

you could also go the i7 route if you want

virtuesoft · 3 Mar 2009 at 15:11

Thanks jak731, that has helped me out a lot!

visibleman · 3 Mar 2009 at 16:18

I have the same processor and board, but using a Thermalright Ultra 120 and Noctua P12 - it keeps the system at ~32c (load, stock Q6600) and it's barely audible.

jak731 · 3 Mar 2009 at 16:23

i would have went for the thermalright ultra extreme 120 too if ocuk had them in stock at the time i made that post

virtuesoft · 16 Mar 2009 at 12:09

Thanks guys, I went for the following spec in the end...

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail 1 £144.99
Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (90-C1CL55-L0UAY00Z) 1 £123.99
Antec 900-2 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) 1 £89.99
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD1001FALS) 1 £84.99
Abit IP35 Pro XE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard 1 £59.99
Seasonic Silverpower 500W Power Supply 1 £50.43
Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 - OEM (69M-00008) 1 £37.38
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) 2 £67.98
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB "Low Profile" DDR2 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail 1 £29.99
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM 1 £16.99
Sub Total: £706.72
DPD Next Day Parcel Shipping: £12.50
Total Vat: £107.88
Total inc Vat: £827.1

I also went for 3 Samsung SM2443BW 24" Monitors from a competitor site for a total cost of £634.42

I'm looking forward to putting it all together this weekend. I'll post some pics once I've finished.

Thanks once again!