R4.3 unusable on HDD and requires SSD?

I’ve been using r4.3 on a T430 with SSD and preloaded dispvms disabled for awhile. It is more sluggish than r4.2.4, but usable. Disabling preloaded dipvms wasn’t necessary, but I’m working to slim everything down (for example, minifying my firewalls and vpn qubes)