Is High Sierra more suited to Macs/MBPs with SSDs?

I am observing a lot of issues ever since I installed High Sierra on my Late 2011 15" MBP which was/is running a rotational hard drive that came with it; and then I tried a fresh install on another fully formatted rotational hard drive (both drives are the poor old 2.5" 5200 RPM). I also notice that my friends who have MBPs with SSDs have no issues with High Sierra, while my machine has suddenly started overheating, ending up with a blue screen of death or into a grey screen and restart loop before it just gives up and shuts down after a few tries.

When it does boot, just a hint of use (nothing compared to what I have put this machine through with previous OSs) just overheats it and it blips out of life. I am lost.

I just want to ask, even though SSDs are an obvious improvement over rotational ones, and I can understand that would be a number one recommendation, what I need to know is whether HS is specifically designed for SSDs and finally call rotational drives obsolete? Also, on a related note, are all the new MBP models being sold essentially come with SSDs?

PS: this would help me decide on whether I should fresh install an older OS on my MBP to keep it alive because in its current state, even with a fresh install on an empty disk, it overheated and died while just installing homebrew. It's unusable; and I cannot buy an SSD just yet.