Mac user needs a BEASTLY PC for Excel and wants to build

Dudes,

I'm new and haven't built a pc before, but I have a particular spreadsheet that I need to run all the time that needs to be faster. I need to do this in Windows because it runs this file 50x faster than on the Mac. It basically comes does to the way the Mac handles copy/paste. The PC kicks its ass.

I think I could spend a grand on a PC just for that.

I've been using Excel 2007 via Boot Camp/XP on my MacBook Pro c2d 2.4 with 6gb of ram. I went to Best Buy and tested the file on a few of their quads and it was actually slower.

I want to build this PC to do run this massive spreadsheet. Don't really need gaming power/graphics..but it'd be nice to have the space to upgrade in the future.

Can you guys tell me what kind of gear I should be looking at?

What's going to make the biggest difference? More cores or more Ghz? Ram?

Feel free to give me a shopping list!

And when building a PC, is it as easy as installing the parts, loading Windows and drivers? I saw a build-kit on Newegg the other day and was wondering what else I'd need/to do.

Thanks!!

Eric

Have you considered installing Windows on the Mac? That would be a lot cheaper than buying a whole new computer just to run one program.

>>Have you considered installing Windows on the Mac? That would be a lot cheaper than buying a whole new computer just to run one program.

That's what I have now. My MacBook Pro is running Xp via VMWare Fusion & Boot Camp. Fusion is slow, but workable. Boot Camp is quite fast. My system is a C2D 2.4, 6gb ram and it crunches a 20,000 line version of my spreadsheet in 30 seconds. I tried out a CDQuad with 4 GB Ram (Gateway SX) and it took a minute or more to run the file. I want it to be faster. I also want to run much larger versions of this file.

The reason I'm looking into another computer is that I need to run it AND my Mac all the time. Ideally, I'd just have a badass MacPro with a virtualized XP, but it seems like the wrong time to buy a Pro and a dedicated PC would be way faster.

I won't be playing games on this machine.

I took at look at these comparison charts and it looks like the i5 could offer some serious bang for my buck in the Excel arena:
http://www.hardware.info/en-US/pro [...] mJfKZ8g,!/

What do you think?

I also read that Excel can only use 3ish gigs of ram, even in Windows 7 64-bit. Is that true?

If it was your money and you wanted something great for Excel, quiet and fast, what would you get?