Should I prioritize RAM or CPU for data science work?

Prioritize 32GB RAM over a faster CPU for most data science work. RAM is the hard limit — if your dataset spills into swap, everything grinds to a halt. Most data science tasks are memory-bound, not CPU-bound, so you’ll notice the difference between 16GB and 32GB far more than between an i5 and an i7. Exceptions are deep learning on a GPU or heavy CPU number crunching, but for typical workflows, spend the extra money on an SSD instead.