Author: Blue Aura Computers
February 23, 2023
If you’re looking to buy a new trading computer it’s important to learn as much as possible about what makes a great system. The computer you buy could easily last a decade or longer and provide many great years of use.
There are endless custom computer builders out there. Make sure you feel comfortable with the business and they’ve been established for awhile, a minimum of 10 years in operation is a good place to start. New companies or start ups should probably be avoided with such a large purchase.
Also, it’s not unheard of for a business to outsource the actual custom build to another company. Are the people you are calling the techs that will actually be assembling and testing your system? Are the people you are talking to just glorified salesmen or do they really know on a technical level all the parts and components and how they all interact? Will tech support know how to help you if something goes wrong? That’ll be important if you ever need to call for tech support in the future.
Your new computer should employ all the newest networking & connectivity features such as Wife 6/6E, Bluetooth and ultra-fast ethernet ports. Most current motherboards have 2.5GB Ethernet ports built into them, that would be a pretty standard feature among most computer companies and as of right now probably sufficient for most traders. If you have a much faster internet connection than 2.5GB, then it’s very important the company you buy your computer from a company that gives you the option to upgrade to a motherboard that offers a 10GB Ethernet port and the fastest WiFi possible. Many companies don’t offer motherboard upgrades or even let their customers know what motherboard is in their system. It’s kind of a strange approach to hide those details as these are custom built systems and not proprietary, it’s best to avoid a business that isn’t 100% transparent on ALL the parts that go into your system.
You don’t want any lag on your new system. It’s important to have a motherboard with PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots that can support the newest hard drives. At Blue Aura Computers we ONLY use high end motherboards for our trading computers. If you’re using a low-cost motherboard, you might not get the fastest M.2 slots and they often won’t come with heatsinks. You’ll get an incredible boost in performance by using a computer with a Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD. When you inquire about the system, simply ask if the drive is a Gen 4 M.2 SSD and it would also be beneficial to ask them the brand and model of SSD. We’ve found the best brands to be Samsung, Sabrent and WD_Black. These companies offer drives that not only perform at top rated speeds but last a long, long time with a minimal chance of failure.
We’re not just talking about the case & fans for cooling, although that is very important. Over the past few years Intel in particular has been more aggressive with wattage for turbo and maximum turbo power. It’s important that the company building your new computer is setting these items properly to avoid overtaxing the CPU for long term use. The aggressive overclock settings that motherboards tend to set by default should be set to Intel defaults. Your system builder should be aware of these issues and addressing this directly.
For our Blue Aura Trading Computers, we use Fractal Design cases for maximum cooling capabilities. Not only are they great for cooling but they are superb for keeping noise levels to a minimum. This computer will be sitting near you for many years so it’s important that it not only performs well but does it as quiet as possible. Our Fractal Design cases have sound dampening materials throughout to minimize any fan noise. Our computers are nearly dead silent under most usage scenarios. The fan profiles can be adjusted as well if the system still needs further noise reduction.
We touched on this earlier. Knowing what components go into your computer is very important, even if you don’t have a high level of technical knowledge with all the various parts, it’s still best to know that you aren’t getting low quality products. Computers are the sum of the parts, quite literally. Even one weak link in the chain can bring a computer to its knees. A bad power supply can cause instability and eventually the computer might not boot up, we recommend Seasonic. Low cost RAM is a huge issue with lockups, blue screens, etc. In our opinion, your RAM should be Crucial (Micron) or Kingston. The motherboards should be standard ATX from ASUS, MSI or Gigabyte. If the company you are looking at isn’t disclosing all of the parts that are going into the computer it would be best to keep looking.
Looking for even more specific information on parts and component advice? Check out our trading computer buyers guide here.