Ok, I'm running it now like this
bitcoind -maxconnections=16 -daemon -disablewallet -datadir=/mnt -printtoconsole -debug -checkblocks=32 -maxorphanblocks=32 -par=1 -dbcache=4
Memory appears to be stable at around 290MB, let's see if it still crashes after 16 hours, I'll leave it running overnight.