SpeculatorSeth

COMBO #3423426 So I'm running DDR4 3000 ran with an ASUS Prime X370-Pro. Is there any kind of tool I can use that would potentially help me prove that it's the ram speed holding it back?

I am doing historical back-testing using a trading application called NinjaTrader 8. Some of these backtests can take up to 20 minutes, and I've even run ones that take days. When I run a back-test I pull up Windows Resource Monitor to verify that all of the cores are being used. Sure enough Ninjatrader correctly uses multithreading utilize all 16 cores of my Ryzen 1700x. However, the cores all show 50% utilization. I assume this means that there is some bottleneck preventing the CPU running at its peak capacity. How do I track down where the bottlenecks are? I can't see anything obvious from Resource Monitor with the disk or memory, and the CPU temp maxes around 53c. So why doesn't the processor run at full capacity? I was thinking that this is an application that could justify buying a threadripper, but I think I need to understand more about the processing bottlenecks first.

That's correct, especially for retail traders. You're not going to compete in the HFT space where they need specialized hardware that can time things down to microseconds. It's going to be more scanning the market for new moves, or back-testing across a large set of historical data. The tasks we're talking about are usually fairly simple. Maybe some floating point math, manipulating hash maps, but nothing too wild. The issue is you're doing it over lots of data. I easily max out all the cores of my 1700x when doing a backtest. For myself I think my next PC will need to be a threadripper. So this is the perfect case where the multiple cores makes a difference. Hence why I thought this specific use case might be interesting to the people on this forum. Looking at the mainstream workplace desktops like HP, Dell, or Lenovo it looks like they're all basically intel shops?

I'm looking for suggestions on prebuilt pc's that would help you maximize your processing power. The use case here is for day trading and historical backtesting. In such a system you don't need a great videocard. You'll need multiple displays but even the low end graphics cards seem to be fine. Memory you need at least 16gb ram if not 32gb. Having a fast hard drive is important, but it doesn't need to be very big. So you can kind of skimp on everything else and just go for the best processor. The applications also multi-thread really well so you'd definitely want to go for a Ryzen processor. I'm one of those guys that always builds the machine myself. Looking around I think I could put a system together for $600 that would give you a Ryzen 3600 with the right deals. However, a lot of the guys in my community are just not comfortable building a PC on their own. So I'm looking for what the best deals would be for a prebuilt at $600, $1000, and $1500+ price points. I was looking at maingear and ibuypower, but it doesn't look like their specs were very comparable for $600. Got any suggestions for other places to look that might focus less on gaming and more on processing power?