a couple of things: 1) Yes, using the background node gets you proper highlights and shadows from the HDRI but at the cost of an unstable rendering situation. lighting the scene with the background and rendering with a GPU can crash your GPU. It's very finicky and does not like being rotated and the render has to go all the way through or your next render WILL crash the GPU. 2) you can simulate the sunlight in those HDRI's by using an infinite light at about %300. 3) You do not need a giant HDRI at 4000 pixels if you use focal blur correctly. Here is an image using BB's Envirosphere and 1 inf. light as sun.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740