Is 32GB of RAM worth it for working with 8GB+ DataFrames?

Yes, it drastically reduces out-of-memory errors compared to 16GB, but it’s not foolproof. An 8GB DataFrame can easily need 16–24GB of real memory due to copies, indexes, and intermediate transformations. With 16GB you’re already in swap territory; 32GB gives enough headroom for most operations on that size of data. However, heavy joins, groupbys, or multiple large DataFrames can still choke 32GB, and if you’re hitting OOM on datasets below 10GB, the problem is probably your code, not your RAM.