Okay so I am giving it another try with the following parameters:
bitcoind -daemon -maxmempool=100 -dbcache=200 -maxsigcachesize=4
I tried with
-dbcache set to 50 but the verification progress (syncing) was way too slow!
It seems to be syncing a bit slower than before with the current parameters but let's hope it keeps the RAM usage below 80%.