Vps option to improve a system performance

Friends, The situation is:

I Have a small system made with SC9.

In current server each time user want to export to excel (using SC), server goes down (some reports have up to 140.000 records), and if I export direct from database, there is not problem.
So I am assuming the problem is:

  • php or similar, or
  • Export tool of SC (Thinking now, the problem could be here)

For the first case, my experience in servers doesn’t exist, and I want to contract a vps for avoid problemas.
I don’t know if 1GB RAM would be enough or more is strictly neccesary.

I would appreciate any comment
Thank in advance.

Dear friends,
Finally I used an external library to export and the exportation is working perfect now.