Budget $2500 or so US, I’m in NC. Prefer to stick with air cooling since I know nothing about water cooling and like the build it once approach and not have to go back and replace things that wear out.
Main functions for build
No gaming, I will run some virtual machines for learning linux and trying out various distribs for newbies.
Main function is running Win10pro rock stable since all stock trading software supports it. I will allocate space for a dual Linux boot at Win10P. install time for future use since its an excellent OS I’ve been wanting to learn forever and its easier att than later afaik. I’m still using Win7 and not familiar with Win10p yet. So I’m not sure if the dual boot setup could be a problem at this stage in the research. Just trying to narrow down the hardware at this point.
The build will use ECC memory for stability and financial calculation integrity. I found this website from a utube search for ECC memory and came across the great “Ryzen: Finding & Running 2666+ ECC. Or Build our own ECC?” video"!
In my situation one decimal in the wrong place could be disastrous. Naturally we want the PC to be as powerful as is required without overclocking or generating excess heat and electrical usage. So I’m thinking the Amd AM4 chipset would be fine in this regard. I’m open to all suggestions as well!
I’ll be running 3 monitors initially and may need to expand to 6. The monitors I have are 3 Benq GL2480 LCD monitors featuring DVI-D, hdmi and d-sub vga inputs. They all support 1920x1080@60hz, the Hdmi inputs can also run the same resolution except at 75hz which is preferable for less eye strain. I’m middle aged and wear glasses already thanks to 20 years behind a desk at my last job looking at monitors.
The PC should be quick and responsive so a 6 or more core cpu and 16-32gb of ECC memory sounds good to me. What do you guys think?
Ideally it will have a dual rj-45 lan connections on the mb. One as a backup in case one fails. My home DSL connection is only 7mbs down so the lan ports don’t need to be the latest and greatest. I’ll likely subscribe to cable for redundancy purposes. Using my smartphone as a hotspot with Wifi is another option for DSL outages. An add-on lan card would be fine in case of a needed tie breaker between two motherboards. My research hasn’t found many motherboards with dual lan ports so far. Getting a separate lan card is fine also and would settle a tie breaker between two motherboards.
A great feature to have in the future that’s not needed now. Is the capability to boot up the pc remotely over the internet. Upload a gig of data for it to process and then download the results with my laptop. This remote capability would also be great for doing remote admin, software and bios updates if needed etc… My initial research found IPMI (internet protocol mgmnt interface) as the name for this feature? Any thoughts on what software you guys are using for this in a Win10 environment would be great! And Linux as well, that will be my longterm OS once I become proficient with it and learn to run my trading software on it in a virtual box etc…
I need help deciding if PCIe 4.0 is needed over the older 3.0 standard for the amount of bandwidth going over the system’s bus to both video cards and 6 monitors in the future. From what I read the 3.0 bus is fine since I’m not running 4k monitors and don’t plan to ever. But I don’t know a way to calculate the amount of data that 6 monitors at 1920x1080 will require. Would really appreciate some guidance in this area!
From what I’ve read the motherboard needs to support Crossfire and or 2-way SLI.
Not for better gaming since I won’t be doing that. But just better video performance overall since those motherboards will have direct channels between the CPU and the video cards GPU’s?
Storage wise I’m planning on booting the OS off a M.2 drive and then having a Raid 1 configuration so I’ll have two copy’s of the data. I still need to research the 3rd off site backup option. I use Macrium reflect for my laptop backups now so something involving it and a external drive would be fine.
My main concern here of course is the chipset, mb, memory and cpu choice with this thread.
Please spell out the first 3 characters of abbreviations used that aren’t in common usage relative as that may be. Naturally I don’t mind looking things up but there are duplicates of many abbreviations as you know. I haven’t built my own pc in like 15 years guys so I’m a caveman that understands the fundamentals involved here but way behind the curve. Hopefully the above relates the main points in a good format.
Please feel free to ask questions and for clarifications. As you know this stuff spiderwebs so I’m just making broad strokes here. Thanks guys!