32GB is the bare minimum for running multiple VMs.

Yes, and I wouldn’t try it with less.

Each VM basically needs its own operating system and a slice of your RAM. Two Windows VMs side by side with the host? That’s easily 12–16GB eaten before you even open a browser. 16GB total means you’re paging to disk constantly, and your whole machine turns into a crawl. 32GB gives you breathing room for the host, the VMs, and some application overhead.

If you’re doing heavy dev or data work inside those VMs, even 32GB can feel tight. But if you’re coming from 16GB, the difference is night and day—multitasking actually works instead of just pretending to.

Your VMs will thank you, and so will your blood pressure.