Help in creating a 27 monitor PC for day trading

Hardware Build a PC
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Hi I’m Paul, I’m a PC tech who owns his own PC shop in Puerto Rico, yesterday I was task with creating a 27 monitor PC for day trading.

I’m here to ask which hardware would you guys think its appropiate for this. This is what I think I will need:
CPU: AMD Threadripper 2950X 16/32
RAM: 64 or 128GBs
SSD: RAID 0 Samsung 970 Pro x 2 for speed or just 1?

now here is where I need help
GPU: Nvidia NVS 810 - This is the only card I’ve seen that out of the box lets me connect 8 monitors.

Given that I need 27 monitors (1080p each) I will need 4 of those cards. 8 x 4 = 32 - 27 = 5 empty ports. But this card is from 2015, I imaging that there might be a better implementation now, correct?

I’ve been trying to read on this and I’ve seen that cards only give you 4 displays maximum (expect for an AMD vision tek (lol tek… ) that gives you 6 displays, but this is much older than the NVS 810).

I’ve read that you can get 8 displays from any card by splitting the display ports from any Quadro card that has 4 display ports. I’ve never done this, is this a possibility? Will all monitors be independant and controllable by windows interface? If so, can you provide a link where it shows how to split display port as independent monitors?

What would you suggest?

My client tells me that he did buy a PC like this last year, it overheated and he returned it. So he wants us to custom cool all his GPUs, that’s really no problem, we’ve done this before, I haven’t researched how to custom cool NVS 810 but i’m sure there’s a possibility. If you can provide a link with whichever GPU you recommend with a water block, kudos to you.

I’m not sure if this forum has “karma” points or something, but I will “thumbs up, karma or give points” to all of you who respond :slight_smile:

Thanks!!! - my first post here, long time listener of Level 1, even longer when Wendell was in The Tek (… dark times lol) when we only listened to his voice and then saw his eyes through the monitors lol.

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That is quite the task.

You are essentially looking for video wall/digital signage graphics cards.

The NVS 810 looks like the cheapest solution.
There is also the Matrox M9188 (can drive up to 8 displays via miniDP) and Matrox C900 (up to 9 displays via miniHDMI)

If “cable clutter” is okay, Matrox has their graphics expansion modules wich essentially makes 1 GPU output into up to 3 independant monitors.

Watercooling and high availability does not sound like a good combination to me, but as Intel is planning to sell watercooled servers, what do I know?

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If he literally only needs it for day trading I’d look over at Matrox. They have cards for this sorta deal.

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Also, you know, G5 case could make all his problems go away.

Question, aren’t machines like this rack mounted in a 4u asd treated as appliances? Cough cough linus?

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Usually, these displaywall setups are indeed rack mounted. It needs substential CPU power and PCIe bandwidth to drive these setups.

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Thanks!!! I went ahead and read some more on the Matrox C900 I think that’s the card I need.

Apparently I was never gonna get this done looking within the consumer market!

Anyways, follow up question guys. My client just wrote to me that he rather I use an Intel chip. I was thinking it must be i9, yet from the looks of it, I will need 3 x Matrox C900. Will the i9 have the necesarry lanes to run this, and by that I mean 3 x 16 Pcie lanes. note that he also wants 2 x nvme disks at 4x pcie. so i’ll need at least 36 + 8 + 1 (wifi card) = 43 Pcie lanes.

Which is better for this task, i9 or threadripper 2? which motherboard would you recommend, thank you :slight_smile:

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Which case do you mean by “G5”, can you please clarify or link. I only got the “apple cheesegrater” when i put it on ebay.

the case I’m thinking of using is the Be Quiet Dark Base Pro 900

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bro I trade and I only need two screens

anything 6+ is a meme

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Its not for me, its for a customer. We build any PC our customer’s want.

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That is a number I can work with :smiley:

Xeon or Epyc (maybe Threadripper), thing is, with this sort of setup and beeing reliant on it for income, ECC is a must in my humble opinion.
CPUs I would look into:
Xeon Silver 4114
Epyc 7351P
Threadripper 2920X

Customer asks, customer payes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Wow so Xeon is 48lanes, TR2 is 60 and Epyc is 128!!! lol that is some overkill. So if this guy wants to keep adding more 3x3 walls he can!

With the Xeon i guess he will be stuck on what he really wants now (27monitors, 2xnvme and wifi) leaving him with just 5 lanes… oh well.

Lately, I’ve been building TR2 builds for almost every pro user and company. I hadn’t worked with Epyc yet.

MazeFrame - can you recommend me a board for the Xeon and for the Epyc? thanks :slight_smile:

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It is less about PCIe bandwidth and more about the surrounding features. Epyc and Xeon especially are meant to run 24/7, not sure if that is a requirement, but those platforms can do it.

Would say you can’t go wrong with Supermicro.
ASRock Rack, Asus and Gigabyte also have some workstation/server class offerings.

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Yeah, i almost always use SuperMicro and /or Asus for server boards. Was wondering if you could recommend a specific model if you would please for epic and xeon, i can take care of the rest. Thanks you been a great help.

I’ve been at this for 2 days straight, i finally decided to come into the forums and got help instantly.

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Well be quiet cases are practically made of foam, so good luck with that rodeo.

Just use a g5 case. They aren’t loud at all,and have better airflow than whatewer crap gets put out now.

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I would use a G5, but I do not know what u are referring to lol. Can you provide a link please?

When i searched for a G5 case a i got what that old apple tower haha

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Knowing him that probably exactly what he is referring to.

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Yeah tthats exactly it.

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Oh hahaha. Well, the equivalent will be a Lian Li then if I were looking to an aluminum build

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I’m curious why they would want X number of discrete screens vs just a few big screens running windowing software? Is there a day-trader related reason for this?

A few giant OLED screens would probably be more power efficient than a bunch of smaller ones, plus easier to manage.

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He already has the setup, he needs a new pc now. If he was buying brand new hardware I would’ve suggested just that.

Its not my first day trading pc. But it is the first one with 27 monitors. He was annoyed I asked too much about his uses, so I’ll just build what he is asking hahaha

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