32GB is the sweet spot for running multiple VMs.

Yes, significantly — if you’re running more than two VMs or any memory-heavy guest.

RAM is the first thing VMs fight over. Each VM needs its own OS footprint plus whatever apps you throw at it. Even a lightweight Linux VM chews through 1-2GB. Windows guests? 4GB minimum to not feel sluggish. Suddenly your 16GB machine is swapping to disk, and performance tanks.

With 32GB you can comfortably run 3-4 VMs at once, or give a single big VM 16GB for databases or dev work. Hypervisors also love extra RAM for memory deduplication and snapshots — features that speed things up if you have headroom.

16GB works for one VM at a time or tiny Alpine containers. But for real work — multiple OSes, compiling, testing networks — 32GB stops being a luxury and starts being the baseline.

If you’re doing serious virtualization, 32GB is the minimum I’d recommend.