Regarding the pagefile, with 32GB of RAM should I just set it to a small fixed size like 1GB? Some people recommend always keeping the pagefile at its default setting (dynamically managed by Windows), whereas other people recommend changing it to a fixed size, so I'm not sure which advice I should follow.
The pagefile may be *needed* by some programs that require it.
It should be "fixed size".
Making it in a RAMdisk (if you can normally access that RAM area) is ridiculous.
It can be reduced to much less than 1 GB without any consequence (Heck! With 32 GB of RAM you won't ever hit it.)
See some more details starting from here:
http://reboot.pro/to...n-vhd/?p=213415
particularly:
http://reboot.pro/to...n-vhd/?p=213428
In a nutshell.
The pagefile is used for TWO things:
1) to virtually expand memory
2) to host the crashdump (but do read the given links)
Traditionally (when ram was scarce AND even large amount of RAM were not so large, AND there were 32 bit addressing limits) the pagefile was sized anything between 1.5x and 2.5x, in some cases even 3x, the physical RAM size.
I.e. given an amount of RAM "a", total amount of memory "b" available to the system was:
1.5*a<=b<=2.5*a
Let's explicit:
a=1 b=2.5-3.5
a=2 b=5-7
a=4 b=10-14
the next step would have been:
a=8 b=20-28
but at the time the good MS guys changed their advise to say that pagefile should be 1x the amount of RAM + some 257 MB (this latter minimum requirement was due uniquely to the use of the pagefile as a "full" crashdump[1]), so:
a=16 b=16.25
Then, in more recent Windows, they allowed the separation, i.e. the pagefile has become ONLY a pagefile and you can configure a separate file for a "full" crashdump:
https://docs.microso...tem-memory-dump
https://docs.microso...-page-file-size
With 32 GB, you need NOT any pagefile (unless a program you use requires it) and in case it should go NOT in RAM but rather in normal storage, and the crashdump should be set to another file (again not in RAM, in normal storage). This latter crashdump file will only be created in case of need, and even if set to "full size" it is well within the normal size of the free space (around 15%) that you should always have on a NTFS volume, even if you have a small 240 GB SSD (240*0.15=36).
Wonko
[1] Good luck to anyone wishing to analyze a several GBytes sized crashdump