Also, I was concerned about my laptop for such a long uptime. I don't want it to be cooked 
I've been cooking my laptop for over a decade. But it was Intel, which usually is less power hungry than AMD.Quote
I only have about 100 GB of SSD space (out of the 256 GB) that I can use but since the datadir is 600 GB+ I am continuing to use HDD.
Can you spare 12 GB for chainstate? Depending on your OS, you can probably symlink chainstate (or blocks!) to the correct disk. So:chainstate: SSD
blocks: HDD
This makes a huge difference!
No wonder you are a genius LoyceV. This actually worked !!!
I did the symlink for chainstate folder to my SSD and now syncing progress is super fast.
I wish I knew this earlier, I would have probably completed the task mentioned in OP by now.
Thanks again. Willing to learn a lot from you.
P.S: I am back on track @NotATether