Bitcoin Core speed recently

(This is not a tech support question - I'm asking about other's experiences)

I've been running a Bitcoin Core node with full blockchain for over 10 years. I tend to switch my PC on in the morning and switch it off at night. It always took half an hour or so to sync in the morning but recently it has been getting longer and longer and longer.

I fully expect the recent hype is having an effect but I am even finding that after fully syncing that it has gone back to the syncing window later in the day - meaning new transactions are happening faster than it can sync sometimes!

Is anyone else experiencing this? (cache = 4096 recent change from default to see if it helped, and also set RPC on recently too even though I have no idea what that does. They were default when I first noticed this problem.)

Is it a sign of massively increased traffic and to be expected or can it be something else?

​