Memory will matter for performance… even with small projects I see RC use 16-20gb ram and some of my larger models have use 70gb or so. Not having the ram available will mean it either has to use fewer features or spend more time paging data to the cache. NVME flash disk will reduce the effects of paging since it is so quick, but if you are paging to a physical drive, the penalty will be significant.
I just wish RC would move more of the processing back into the GPUs - I seem to be seeing less and less on the GPU and more time CPU bound these days. (but then I have 2 gtx1080s so maybe the gpu stuff just gets done more quickly now)