16GB vs 32GB RAM for 8GB+ DataFrames: 32GB drastically reduces OOM errors but isn't foolproof

32GB gives you enough headroom for most operations on 8GB DataFrames, while 16GB puts you in swap territory because Pandas can double or triple raw data size. But heavy joins, groupbys, or multiple large DataFrames can still choke 32GB — then you need Dask, chunking, or better memory management. If you’re hitting OOM on sub-10GB data with 32GB, your code is likely the problem.