PostgreSQL on Desktop vs. Server How does running PostgreSQL on a Windows desktop with pgAdmin III compare to running it on a dedicated server? I am trying to develop a database with very large tables (~60 million rows) with the following hardware:


64-bit Windows 7
Dual quad-core Intel Core i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40 GHz
32 GB RAM


I would like to know if it would be worthwhile to invest in a server or whether the desktop should be sufficient. The tables will be static, so I mainly concerned with the time it will take to read the data and perform basic aggregate and join operations.
Wiki answer collecting partial answers originally left in question comments

That's more than enough, you don't need a server.

60 million rows isn't that big nowadays - unless you've got huge numbers of blobs. Stick with your desktop unless you start to have major performance issues.

PostgreSQL runs better on *nix than on Windows and the number of drives is a big factor too. Nothing beats a ton of SSDs in RAID 10, but you'll be fine with your current setup!

If you want help improving your queries, you should post a question with the query and query plan from explain (analyze). See postgresql-performance for more details on which information is required for questions regarding slow queries.