That's the line of investigation I'm currently following.

I was this close to just buying a couple of sticks and upgrade the RAM and see if I just like that could get it done faster. 40-50 bucks to upgrade the RAM is not going to break the bank, but the whole idea is that once I get passed this ordeal, Bitcoin Core is fairly light to run, right?

How do I determine it's actually Bitcoin Core the one causing such load on the swap? The system monitor does show the process reading heavily, not just writing (which it does lightly only, in comparison).

But why would it not just use the 60% of the RAM that's still available instead of whatever is in the swap?