What specs are required to trade in 2024?

[MaxT]

Hello gents, I have a quick question for anyone kind enough to inform me:

What baseline PC / Laptop / monitor specs would you recommend for trading?


Additional context -

1. This question is step one (or rather zero) in my trading venture and as such I lack the practical experience required to assess this myself in any capacity

2. I’m ready to do research if necessary, but my tech knowledge is unexceptional (about average for a 21 year old) so whilst I understand processing power, RAM etc. high-level jargon may escape me

3. My ideal budget is approx £1000. There is some wiggle room here but the outlay naturally effects my starting bankroll


Thanks for any help!

[Emmson]

£1000 is more than enough imo

A laptop with processor north of a intel celeron and16GB Ram and Full HD ( 1920 × 1080)is very viable in my world especially if like me you don't place much importance on advance charting.

[jamesedwards]

Impossible to answer without knowing what sort of trading.

I rely on fast processing of my automations so will always go for a core i5 or above no more than a couple of generations old, and at least 8GB memory. Solid state drive is handy if you want a laptop that boots up quickly. Think about the screen resolution if you're going to be using the laptop screen. The bigger the resolution the greater the real estate for multitasking and especially useful for BA rule writing etc.

[jamesedwards]

Other things to consider, if you're going to be leaving it on 24/7 then you might consider a bigger chassis and check reviews for temperature and air flow.

If you're planning to only use it with a monitor then perhaps consider getting a mini-PC instead? Probably more bang for your buck and better air-flow.

[sionascaig]

As a backup I just have a mini PC and not had any issue running automation...

Two screens are very handy though )

[conduirez]

I suggest you buy a used refurbished PC/Laptop, they will be cheaper than £1000 and you just need to look at GB storage 250GB, Ram at least 4GB, Windows 10 or Windows 11 and has Wi-Fi built in (make doubly sure it has (Wi-Fi).
Try Amazon or Ebay etc

Here look at this.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=refurbishe ... _sb_noss_1

don't spend too much money on hardware at first.

[jimibt]

i'd be tempted to go the virtual route and buy yourself two decent monitors and attach them to a bog standard pc. from there, you can pick up a decent vps deal with a spec to suit minimum BA requirements (4gb). the advantage of this is that you are *on* 24/7* and will not be stressing your pc. altho i no longer have commitments in BA/BF, i do run this kind of setup when targeting Forex/indices. It's a great set/forget/failsafe, tho may not be for everyone as there may be some heavy duty activities from time to time (such as optimising, backtesting etc) that is best placed on a high spec pc.

that said, BA offers no facility for this, so the above may be a perfect solution for your requirements.

Hope it all works out...

jim

fyi -2 decent monitors (for the task) might cost you @ £120 each, plus bog standard pc at £200. thereafter, you'd have the recurring monthly vps charge of @£15-20. this may or may not be a deal breaker.

[MaxT]

£1000 is more than enough imo

A laptop with processor north of a intel celeron and16GB Ram and Full HD ( 1920 × 1080)is very viable in my world especially if like me you don't place much importance on advance charting.

Thanks emmson

Obviously (having never used the BA software) I can’t accurately say how important advanced charting would be to me - but having now watched 2 YouTube videos posted by Peter Webb on the subject - it is something I’d like the option to use / experiment with

[MaxT]

Impossible to answer without knowing what sort of trading.

I rely on fast processing of my automations so will always go for a core i5 or above no more than a couple of generations old, and at least 8GB memory. Solid state drive is handy if you want a laptop that boots up quickly. Think about the screen resolution if you're going to be using the laptop screen. The bigger the resolution the greater the real estate for multitasking and especially useful for BA rule writing etc.

Other things to consider, if you're going to be leaving it on 24/7 then you might consider a bigger chassis and check reviews for temperature and air flow.

If you're planning to only use it with a monitor then perhaps consider getting a mini-PC instead? Probably more bang for your buck and better air-flow.

Thanks James / fair point.

Perhaps a better question would’ve been - Which specs are most important relative to various styles of trading? Which you’ve already somewhat answered re automation

If I knew that then I could possibly aggregate the responses to decide upon the most well rounded trading PC / Laptop in my price point. And therefore avoid being significantly handicapped in any one area, regardless of what the style(s) I end up preferring

I’m currently doing further research on mini PC’s, it’s solid idea for sure. There’s a lot of jargon I’m going to have to get my head around to fully understand the pros / cons of each but hopefully it’s worth my time

[MaxT]

As a backup I just have a mini PC and not had any issue running automation...

Two screens are very handy though )

Thanks for the mini PC co-endorsement

Intuitively having 2+ screens does sound like a good idea. Luckily I already have one monitor lying around

[MaxT]

I suggest you buy a used refurbished PC/Laptop, they will be cheaper than £1000 and you just need to look at GB storage 250GB, Ram at least 4GB, Windows 10 or Windows 11 and has Wi-Fi built in (make doubly sure it has (Wi-Fi).
Try Amazon or Ebay etc

Here look at this.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=refurbishe ... _sb_noss_1

don't spend too much money on hardware at first.

Hi conduirez, thanks for your help

In browsing the BA forums I see a lot of contradictory opinions on refurbished hardware. Seems like the appraisal of used tech is best left to people with greater experience than I currently have

That said the specs you’ve given me are very simple to filter for, so I may end up searching for reliable sellers and trying my luck

[MaxT]

i'd be tempted to go the virtual route and buy yourself two decent monitors and attach them to a bog standard pc. from there, you can pick up a decent vps deal with a spec to suit minimum BA requirements (4gb). the advantage of this is that you are *on* 24/7* and will not be stressing your pc. altho i no longer have commitments in BA/BF, i do run this kind of setup when targeting Forex/indices. It's a great set/forget/failsafe, tho may not be for everyone as there may be some heavy duty activities from time to time (such as optimising, backtesting etc) that is best placed on a high spec pc.

that said, BA offers no facility for this, so the above may be a perfect solution for your requirements.

Hope it all works out...

jim

fyi -2 decent monitors (for the task) might cost you @ £120 each, plus bog standard pc at £200. thereafter, you'd have the recurring monthly vps charge of @£15-20. this may or may not be a deal breaker.

Hi Jimibt, thanks for the advice (and also for introducing me to backtesting, I’m desperate to try it out now)

After doing some brief research to understand your VPS idea, in theory it’s completely genius.
However the consensus seems to be that it’s easy for someone with limited tech knowledge to overestimate / mess up what they need. So my primary concern is that a simple one time purchase may be wiser - in that I’d rather over spend once than 12 times per year


I have a couple further questions for you if you don’t mind

1. How confident are you that £15-£20 per month would be sufficient for my VPS requirements?

2. You mentioned optimising in your message. Optimising what exactly?

[jamesedwards]

I am currently running the following:

Main PC, now 5 years old. Using for my general computing as well as in-running horse racing, so complex automations, multiple video streams, spreadsheets etc. Was overkill at the time but I wanted no compromise on spec. Ryzen 9 3900XT processor, 32GB memory, solid state drive, nVidia 2070 super graphics. Custom build costing about £1500. Still works perfectly.

Mini PC, about a year old, running reasonably complex automations 24/7. Ryzen 7 5700G with onboard graphics (no dedicated graphics card), 32Gb memory, solid state drive. Cost about £600 from Amazon. Works perfectly.

Acer Swift Go 14" laptop running reasonably complex automations 24/7. Core i5-13500H processor with on-board graphics (no dedicated graphics card), 8GB memory, solid state drive. The memory on this is a bit tight. Runs fine but sits at about 85% memory usage. Cost £500 (clearance price) from Currys a few months ago.

I control all three machines through my main PC using Google Remote Desktop. Desktop real estate is very important to me so I have a 49" 5120x1440 monitor.

Capture48.JPG

[jimibt]

Hi Jimibt, thanks for the advice (and also for introducing me to backtesting, I’m desperate to try it out now)

After doing some brief research to understand your VPS idea, in theory it’s completely genius.
However the consensus seems to be that it’s easy for someone with limited tech knowledge to overestimate / mess up what they need. So my primary concern is that a simple one time purchase may be wiser - in that I’d rather over spend once than 12 times per year


I have a couple further questions for you if you don’t mind

1. How confident are you that £15-£20 per month would be sufficient for my VPS requirements?

2. You mentioned optimising in your message. Optimising what exactly?

i'm confident that you'd be able to run BA on a lowish spec windows vps: https://www.ionos.co.uk/server-configur ... center-lhr

As james has pointed out in his reponse, even farily *old* setups can run BA succesfully to quite a high spec.

For me, I have a powerful desktop with 2 monitors which I use for coding and optimisation.

Screenshot 2024-10-18 142805.png

I then have a vps which i use purely for running my automations. as mentioned, I'm no longer running BA but am instead running cTrader. However, the requirements for ba vs ctrader on a vps are fairly similar and it works great for me.

[Kai]

Probably best to keep it simple and cheap as you learn, keeps the risk at a minimum. I'd avoid random subscriptions since you don't really know what you need at this point, besides the actual trading software.

Hardware can be expensive but you can find a lot of value in refurbished stuff etc, or the upcoming Black Friday maybe.

AI is a good resource to use and will happily answer all questions (try Gemini), while Reddit communities can help you find/build a PC. They've helped me build a tricky one via Discord.

And watch out for scammers and snake oil salesmen in the murky waters of sports trading.

https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestapc/
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/