Restored windows image, and definitely more frequent pauses (tpu memtest + realbench + occt), but none of the lengthy ones.
So, will probably go down route of full install at some point. Just not now.
For now I'm calling it stable passing 3 hours occt and 9 hours tpu memtest, and hopefully that will translate to gaming, encoding and general usage stable.
I'd call that stable mate. 10/10 for your perseverance.