Recommend a PC Configuration for Heavy Excel Calculations

Hello!
I have recently ran into a productivity wall with my Pentium M 1,7 GHz Sony laptop, that I bought 3 years ago. I am working on a model of one process in Excel and the current version of the file is 200 Mbs comprised of 10 sheets filled to the brim with interrelated formulas (the final version is going to be close to 500 Mbs). Understandably my laptop is refusing to show any speed at all and takes minutes – and sometimes tens of minutes – to recalculate the workbook. I wonder if someone here is a power user of the Excel and can recommend to me a work station that can handle such files with ease? I am working in Excel 2003.
Here are the specs of one PC that the local computer firm is offering to me:

Desktop:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 / MB Intel DG41RQ / DDRII 2048Mb PC6400 Kingston / HDD 250Gb Seagate 7200 rpm SATA / Card Reader (CF, MMC, SD, MS) / Video on board / DVD.RW Pioneer / Sound / АТX YY 400w

Laptop:
Toshiba Qosmio F50-127 Intel CoreDuo P8600 2.4
15.4"/G97/4G/320/DVDRW/WF/BT/Cam/VHP

Please let me know what you think!)

Thanks!
Dima

For the desktop:

Consider a quad core. Despite the fact there are few apps optimized for quad core CPU you will still realize significant processing gains. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...u,2280-11.html

RAM: you get the best bang for buck here. You didn't specify the OS, but if it is XP, then there is no benefit to getting more than 3GB. If using Vista, get the maximum amount your MB can handle, even if it means sticking with your current CoreDuo CPU to offset costs.

Motherboard: I would opt for an ASUS, MSI, or Gigabyte high end board that allows for overclocking the cpu and adjusiting memory timing/latency to get the best power/efficiency. Most MB manufactures include a utility for this and it is pretty much automated so that you don't have to be a geek to accomplish it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...otherboards,2/

Onboard video is, IMO, lame, but if you are only running office apps and not games then it will probably suffice. Still, for a few more $ you can get a low to mid tier GPU that will provide better performance.

HDD: they are so cheap these days, you can opt for a 500 GB or higher for little cost.

I hope your local PC firm gave you a decent price on the configuration you described as it seems to be an low-to-average system.

Of course upgrading the hardware is nice, but I think you should primarily look at improving the workbook. I know that's probably not what you want to hear when you've spent so much time building it.


Does it have a lot of CSE formulas / SUMPRODUCT formulas? Consider alternatives such as pivot tables, helper columns, database functions, UDFs etc...

Does it have a lot of VLOOKUP and MATCH formulas? Consider ascending sort the referenced data and use approximate match.

As a general rule of thumb, try to reduce the size of the ranges (eg. not entire columns) you are passing into the functions.

Volatile functions recalculate on every recalculation... can you do without them or minimize the performance impact?

The list goes on...



There's an extensive article on MSDN written by Charles Williams for improving performance. It's targeted Excel 2007 but many points remain relevant for Excel 2003:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730921.aspx