If the built-in disk has low enough latency, your memory needs go way down as giant predictive disk caches become unnecessary and swapping is less of a performance killer.
Moving to SSD let me put a VM on my 8GB laptop that stole half the RAM without destroying my ability to run a couple of visual studios, office and a pile of chrome tabs. Under 4GB and spinning disk that was unworkable.
RAM needs might be stagnating for a few years as high-performance flash becomes commonplace and applications don't have to be as aggressive about keeping everything in memory.