Went through similar with my partner, easiest fix was reducing the amount of stuff she had on the HDD- seems that once you head past 80% capacity it has an effect on the speed of the system.
After that the RAM and SSD upgrades should give a decent bump. RAM is easy enough to just swap out, never got as far as cloning and replacing the HDD though so good luck with that!
Thing is, it's not even slightly full. She's a writer so not storing thousands of videos /photos crazy applications. She saves all that for filling up her phone till it grinds to a halt.
Went through similar with my partner, easiest fix was reducing the amount of stuff she had on the HDD- seems that once you head past 80% capacity it has an effect on the speed of the system.
After that the RAM and SSD upgrades should give a decent bump. RAM is easy enough to just swap out, never got as far as cloning and replacing the HDD though so good luck with that!