There is nothing like RAM-overkill
I haven’t used WebODM on my laptop (Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ CPU @ 2.70GHz, 4c/8t, 16GB), but native ODM from the commandline. My favorite settings where to use half of the cores for ODM, so you can do things parallel, specially QGIS. The time depends strongly from the settings you use, the mine are a compromise between quality and speed. Building orthophotos from around 250 pictures goes around 20 to 30 minutes. WebODM on a vm with 4 cores and 16GB takes around 38 minutes.
Hi, can only tell my little experience as mainly can depend on your workload, first of all I’ve seen many problems in the forum with VM’s that I don’t feel on my linux installations so I will lean on a linux os as base system.
For the cores the whole process on my systems tends to be spanned putting at 100% all cpus, not in every single step obviously but mostly they work in parallel.
My main system has only 24 gb of ram but for what I’ve done up to now they are enough, don’t feel the need of adding more ram despite the little cost should be.
ciao
luca