I’m thinking of building a forex computer, and it seems like I may as well just build a gaming computer, but there are special quirks of the forex computer. Can anyone tell me what that would be?

The software for data delivery is probably more important, or just as important as the computer.

What you’re trying to overcome with speed is data bottlenecks. With gaming, it is graphics data problems. All of the moving objects and colors of a game are graphics issues that should be handled by the graphics board rather than the CPU. Obviously, a dual core Quad is going to be better than a single. But you need a good graphics card with lots of onboard memory.

With a trading machine, you’re handling lots of data coming in from outside the computer, processing that data into many different charts and calculating indicators. The graphics is not the problem of a gaming machine. The problem is when there’s a flood of data, like when there’s a report, or around the open of different markets, when markets go wild. I’ve had computers completely freeze for several minutes when extreme volatility situations arise. Sometimes I would have to reboot to get control back, and that can take ten minutes to get back up and running with everything updated and functioning again; obviously, that won’t work for a trader. The software should have a method to throttle that data, because you don’t need every tick, estpecially when the input data is a thousand-fold what it was a minute ago. If you’re using a web browser, rather than a dedicated trading program downloaded to your computer, you have no control over the data feed. A good trading platform like Realtick or Tradestation, will have at least 3 or 4 different methods of sampling and throttling to control high volumes of data. NinjaTrader does a good job, but I’ve got a super fast computer, so I never see any glitches.

There are several informational and learning websites. If you watch their trading videos, you’ll see what they’re using.

http://www.forextv.com/forex-video-archi…
http://www.babypips.com/
http://www.dailyfx.com
http://www.fxstreet.com/rates-charts/usd…
http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/

The best way to learn is from a book. You can find three different eBooks here:

http://members.cox.net/axiom11/#Info
Insider Forex Secrets

http://members.cox.net/axiom11/page2_lin…
Forex Trading-Revolution To Home Based Internet Business
Forex Trading Strategies

There are many eBooks listed here, so to find the one you want, just hit Ctrl-F (for Find) in your web browser to find "forex".