50+ tabs before swap, usually.

You’ll hit swap somewhere between 60 and 100 Chrome tabs on 32GB of RAM, depending on what those tabs are doing. A static website uses ~50–100MB per tab. YouTube, Google Docs, or heavy sites like that can push 200–400MB each. So rough math: 32GB minus OS overhead (~4GB) leaves ~28GB for Chrome. If average tab is 150MB, that’s ~180 tabs before swap. But in real life, background tabs get swapped out earlier, and Chrome’s process management kicks in. Most people start noticing slowdowns around 50–70 tabs, with swap activity ramping up past that.

If you’re someone who genuinely needs 100+ tabs open all the time, 64GB is worth it. For normal heavy tab usage, 32GB is plenty. Closing tabs you aren’t using still helps, but you already know that.