Is this possible?

[compdoc]

> I'd like the sys SSD to have as long a life as possible, 
>and was hesitant to put the swap on it.

In the beginning, people thought swap would wear out an SSD. But SSDs have proven to be pretty durable, and I doubt swap is any harder on an SSD than other types of file operations.

The one thing I do, which is also done for you if you use the software that comes with some SSDs like Crucial or Samsung, is to leave a certain amount of space unformatted. I think this is called over-provisioning.

This is important for certain operations by the drive's controller, and increases the life of the drive. 


> Swap is currently on a HD

I wonder if that and other modifications you’ve done to the standard install, or possibly even utils you’ve installed are actually causing your troubles. 


> I can't even get 32G to work on a 970. In my *initial* 
>looks, it seems that one has to go to ddr4 to do that, 
>which in turn requires an 1151 processor.

Not sure I follow the reasoning behind this. You can install 32G of ddr3 ram in a system that supports it. I know people with systems that have 32G of ddr3. I think that it's important to have a matched set, though.