system build needing upgrade, CPU or RAM?

Probably the only way, is to get a second hand Intel Core i7-4xxx CPU, probably the Core i7-4790 (update your BIOS to the latest before switching it out)
Recover some costs by selling your i5 CPU.

Upgrading the rest probably is not of that much use (you didn't put your HDD specs, but upgrading to SSD will also give you a performance boost). Keep checking memory usage, if over 80% most of the time, that's worth investing in also.

If you wish to upgrade the CPU, and you should upgrade to an SSD drive for speed (agree with the above), then you are probably best to take this money and put it toward a new system properly engineered

Did you metion RAM? Sorry if I missed it, but 8GB is best for pretty much any office use. Use task manager to look at how much memory you are using.

Really, for $500 you can probably upgrade the whole system.

i have 16gb installed.

actually it appears i have samsung SSD 840 EVI 250GB

As a unit (High End i5, SSD, 16 GB) you won't see much benefit from trying to change to an i7.  

I have an i5 high end laptop and an i7 laptop both with 16 GB.  The i5 performs very well.

If you have all your applications open at the same time then more RAM is going to make a big difference, if it is only one or two at a time then RAM may not make any difference,

so really nothing i can do John?

where can i see how much RAM is powering this?

Look in MSINFO (Microsoft app on board) to see your memory.

so really nothing i can do John?

Put money toward a newer faster system

i do not have msinfo

you say move to faster system but also said moving ot i7 doesn't give me much of a lift over i5. so what would i be buying?

No msinfo.   You should have, but in any event, right click on My Computer, select Properties and the Information window tells you how much memory.

what would i be buying?   <-- The fastest new generation i7 (or better if a vendor has one), NVMe SSD drive and 16 GB of memory would be a good pick.

If your goal is to speed up certain applications then it depends on what applications are slow.

For example, upgrading your CPU won't help much if the slow application is a network-driven application like a client app.

If your problem is something like video encoding or something that is processing-heavy, then moving to the latest i7 could help quite a bit.

If you're running a LOT of applications and see slowdown, then moving to 32 GB RAM or more and disabling your pagefile might be a better option.

So the first step in spending your money wisely is identifying the root cause of your problem. If you don't tell us info about the applications you're running and about how and when they become slow, then we can only guess.

ok last questions

1) i already have 16gb, so are you suggesting getting better quality RAM sticks?  i bought that 16gb in 2017.
2) is i7 2019 much better than i7 2017?
3) how much better is that NVM SSD than my one
4) what % performance improvment would i get from #1,#2,#3,

i run a lot of chrome stuff, outlook. physical memory is at 41%. cpu usage never really spikes. but computer has been freezing a ton lately.

Chrome uses a lot of memory but does not cause the computer to freeze.

Computer freezing is not related to the specifications above.

You may wish to start a question about your computer freezing and see if that can be resolved with your current system. We would need the operating system and Pro / Home.

Thank you and best of luck with your system.

Try a new question about the system freezing and we can help you.

Sorry finnstone, but without further explanation I'm going to have to object to the closure. Other Experts already said everything that John said in the answer you selected and you didn't give anyone else any credit or any explanation.

NVMe is twice or more as fast as regular SSD

First, that depends greatly on the drives being compared.

Second, even if it has the CAPACITY to be faster, it won't do any good if the performance problems aren't based on disk I/O. That would be like saying a race car is twice or more as fast as a sports car. It MIGHT be, but if you're driving on a freeway that is limited to 80 mph, then it doesn't matter what speeds the car is CAPABLE of. Everyone seems to be throwing out answers without fully understanding the problem.

For example, he mentions running a lot of Chrome tabs. That right there could be a problem that CANNOT be solved with hardware. There are plenty of sites that have poorly-written scripts on them, and those scripts will cause the computer to slow to a crawl (and even lead to freezing), regardless of hard disk speed or CPU or RAM.

I'll throw out an example - there's a gaming site called "wowhead.com" which is a sort of wiki or resource guide for a popular video game. It has a lot of advertisements and 3rd party scripts that will quickly consume massive amounts of memory and churn the CPU constantly. Just take the most powerful machine you have and go open up a few tabs pointed at various pages on that site and you'll see the rest of the computer start crawling and freezing. The problem is entirely due to some code on that side - nothing that ANY hardware can fix.

There are plenty of other websites like it, varying in purpose from video gaming to news to everyday productivity. Sometimes one of them is fine, but when you get an accumulation of sites going (especially with more and more sites using HTML 5 and WebGL features that consume more hardware resources), it can kill performance and cause freezing.

So if finnstone goes and spends $500 on upgrades and still has the same problem, then we've essentially helped him waste his money.

In my opinion, it sounds like this question is based on an underlying software problem, not hardware.

@finnstone - My personal recommendation to you would be to go install the "uBlock Origin" Chrome extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en

This extension helps to block many common, resource-draining advertisements on web sites. It can make a huge difference for browser-heavy usage and is free. Then see how your performance is after a few days.

P would suggest using a different browser that does not hog so many resources,