Best PC specification for Large Pivot tables

Hi there
I currently have a 6 month old Dell Vostro 470 with Intel Core i7 quad processor 3.4ghz processor and 8gb SDram, 2tb hard drive and 1gb graphics card. I run Office 2010, but 99% of my work is in Excel and specifically Pivot Tables.
I run large Excel spread sheets typically size around 200-300mb built around a data sheet that may have up the 1m row limit and 200 columns. A quick glance shows that I have 1000mb files (what is that 1gb?, 1m kb if I have that right) which seem to open
quite quickly, less than a minute, but on all my large files I do have issues around crashes, being able to refresh the pivot.
Typically I may have 20 worksheets in a workbook all relating to the same source data sheet, which may be in the same workbook or in a separate workbook on the same pc.
I have two queries. Where best to go for advice on the best PC spec for my type of work (if not here)? and specific advice realting to a purchase. I am contemplating a dell Optiflex and wondering if a 32gb SD RAM memory will give worthwhile
extra performance against the 8gb that I have now and whether Dell has better processors that might suit me better.
I do find that on current Vostro 470 system with my 8gb quad processor, an Excel spread sheet will stop working when it exceeds a little more than 1.5gb memory according to task manager (How does that relate to 8gb of SDRAM?).
Often I have a number of workbooks open to enable the pivots to refresh. Usually it just says insufficient resource. I have found it useful to have the Pivot source data as a CSV file to reduce size, but I still find myself constantly having to adapt
some spread sheets so that if the pivot source data file is only 500,000 rows then sometimes I have to limit the Pivot source to that number (rather then 1m) which is difficult if the size increases next time I need to refresh the pivots.
So I have these issues around the ability to update (refresh) Pivot tables, the size of workbooks I can open and to a degree the speed that my pc will calculate, even though I often have to work with worksheets that do not recalculate automatically ie I turn off
automatic updates, so that it works efficiently.
2 KEY QUESTIONS:
·         Where best to go for advice on how to manage large data sheets/ pivot tables?
·         What spec of pc to go for optimum efficiency of my Excel/ pivot table needs?
I SPENT JUST LESS THAN £1,000 with Dell on my last Dell Vostro 470 (including Office 2010).
·         Should I go for a Dell Optiflex and pay extra £400 to get 32gb SDRAM and could I spend even more to improve my work efficiency?
·         How fast are the fastest Processors and can I improve much on what I have with my Dell Vostro 470
·         Are there any other PC's out there I should be considering?
·         I sometimes get messages like insufficient resources to display correctly.
Do I need a better graphics card?
Sorry this posting is so long. If you have been, thanks for reading
Not quite sure which forum to go for, so advice especially appreciated.
Jesper

My thanks for that. I would be very pleased if there was a solution.
I am in fact running 64bit Win7 Professional but my pre-installed Office 2010 is 32bit. Does that sound strange?   I really don't know much about 32bit and 64 bit.
Would I have to purchase an entirely new copy of 64bit to get the memory benefits of which you speak? I'm assuming that if so I would would have to buy Office 64bit, rather than just buy a copy of Excel 2010 or 2013 64 bit?
Many thanks for you help.
As a secondary question, it seems on investigation, that my processor is one of the best around. Could you advise?
OS Name   Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Version   6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description    Not Available
OS Manufacturer   Microsoft Corporation
System Name   DELL470
System Manufacturer   Dell Inc.
System Model   Vostro 470
System Type   x64-based PC
Processor   Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3401 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date   Dell Inc. A06, 25/05/2012
SMBIOS Version   2.7
Windows Directory   C:\Windows
System Directory   C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device   \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale   United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer   Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name   Dell470\DellPG
Time Zone   GMT Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)   8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory   7.96 GB
Available Physical Memory   5.09 GB
Total Virtual Memory   15.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory   12.7 GB
Page File Space   7.96 GB
Page File   C:\pagefile.sys
Many thanks, Jesper

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Hi,
Base on my test in excel 2013, it works fine.
You said your excel version is excel 2011, there isn’t that version of office.
>> I keep receiving the 1004 error
Does it has detail error message?
>> it says I need to delete/change some code
Could you provide the screenshot here?
On the other hand, you may share a sample file on the OneDrive.
Regards
Starain
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Edited by: user1140193 on Oct 21, 2011 7:15 AM
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Award points if this post helped you..
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just confused of this behaviour... any ideas would be greatly appreciated...
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This seems to be a bug with the Excel. This works fine with Netscape and also should work fine with other browsers. In IE, the temp file is created with a file name that ends with a square bracket at the end( eg. myExcel[1].xls ) and this is contrary to the file naming convention of ms-excel ( should not contain '[' or ']' ).
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To check this,
Create an excel file and try to save it with a file name that contains square brackets...
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Is possible to do a two pivot table (EACH with DIFFERENT CALCULATED ITEMS)??
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I can't create my calcs in column criteria.
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