diff --git a/test-suite/standalone/test-out-of-memory b/test-suite/standalone/test-out-of-memory
index 0fc5a2e9e..bf55a4113 100755
--- a/test-suite/standalone/test-out-of-memory
+++ b/test-suite/standalone/test-out-of-memory
@@ -17,8 +17,8 @@ exec guile -q -s "$0" "$@"
     (write "Skipping test.\n" (current-error-port))
     (exit 0)))
 
-;; 100 MB.
-(define *limit* (* 100 1024 1024))
+;; 50 MB.
+(define *limit* (* 50 1024 1024))
 
 (call-with-values (lambda () (getrlimit 'as))
   (lambda (soft hard)
@@ -36,8 +36,10 @@ exec guile -q -s "$0" "$@"
 (use-modules (rnrs bytevectors))
 
 (test (lambda ()
-        ;; A vector with a billion elements doesn't fit into 100 MB.
-        (make-vector #e1e9)))
+        ;; Unhappily, on 32-bit systems, vectors are limited to 16M
+        ;; elements.  Boo.  Anyway, a vector with 16M elements takes 64
+        ;; MB, which doesn't fit into 50 MB.
+        (make-vector (1- (ash 1 24)))))
 (test (lambda ()
         ;; Likewise for a bytevector.  This is different from the above,
         ;; as the elements of a bytevector are not traced by GC.