Programs crashing daily. Before and after wipe / install. Next steps?

That does not sound good ... if indeed those were the only things installed on a blank Mac with only the MacOS, none of those should cause those crashes and involuntary restarts. The whoosh sound you heard is a complete system crash (called a kernel panic) and shutdown, if it happens once a year, no big deal, if it is happening every week, that's a serious problem. With just browsers installed (but did you bring over any user settings, software, tools ... or were those browsers the only things installed?), this should not be happening.

Based on what you describe, it might be hardware. In which case it could be a bad memory module, a major item like the main logic board, main internal drive failing ... But just to make sure, you could download and run Etrecheck and post the (anonymous) report here for readers to check for anything other than hardware. See this for instructions: Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

This is worth doing because broken hardware likely means a new computer is needed, the most expensive outcome. Whereas Etrecheck can sometimes find a culprit that is easier (and much cheaper) to address.

If the internal boot drive is failing and causing this, you could try the solution mentioned here, which would cost only a few hundred $:

Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

To diagnose an unknown but likely hardware issue, I would take the Mac to an Apple Authorized Service Provider. These are independent shops that are certified by Apple and have more leeway than an Apple Store to repair or otherwise do work on an older Mac. I used one to put new internal SSDs in a 2013 MacBook Air and a 2015 iMac, both of which are running fine after 5+ years after the repairs. Before going to a repair shop, I would post the Etrecheck report here (Etrecheck and posting here are free) to get lots of additional eyes on the problem.

Did you wipe the drive, e.g. full erase/format? Then was a fresh MacOS installed and tested before migrating over all your settings and preferences and software? It is possible that migrating back everything just brought back the cause of the problem again. So testing with a new generic admin user first is the acid test. If everything is "fixed," you can then migrate back just user accounts and files, but no software. Then retest. If ok, then you reinstall from scratch (new installers) one or two apps at a time, retesting after each, to make sure you have not brought back the problem.

If the problems reappeared before migrating anything from your old system and before installing any non-Apple software, then you have a hardware problem. If the problem only occurs after migrating your old account and previous software/apps, then it was more likely something that had been installed.

It's one or the other -- something installed, or hardware.

If it is hardware, it makes more sense to simply replace the computer rather than try to service/repair a 2019 iMac. But that's up to you. The kinds of issues you described can be expensive to fix (main logic board), although it could be a bad memory module. Some of these parts are soldered in and can be difficult to replace, and finding the right parts for an older Mac can also be hard.

AlChris86 wrote:

<EtreCheck report.log>

To clarify, in case there is a misunderstanding. The computer has NOT crashed since the reinstall. Thankfully. But, I am concerned it will. The crashes for now, have been software.

Looking through your Etrecheck report, it looks very clean to me. I doubt that anything installed is causing any issues. It is POSSIBLE that one of those browsers has caused the crashes/shutdowns, especially if left running all night on web sites that might be reset (on the web servers), streaming ads/videos or whatnot. One way to understand that better (temporarily) is to shut down all browsers and other software running at night, if it crashes or shutdowns at night, that might be indicative of hardware failing. But unless those full shutdowns return, you are probably fine going forward.

You are running Sequoia on a system with 8GB of RAM. You have more than 500GB of data pushed off RAM to swap space with almost nothing on the system and running. It is absolutely no surprise Apps are crashing. I'd suspect your memory pressure readings in Activity Monitor are routinely very high.

Your RAM is user upgradeable. And pretty inexpensive. Buy 4 matching sticks of Mac-compatible DDR4 2667Ghz RAM - either 4 x 4GB or 4 x 8GB depending if want to go to 16GB or 32GB - but you need at least 16GB if you want to avoid apps crashing.

Yes. Swap means that there's not enough space available in RAM for the system to load code or data it needs to work on - so it's offloading other things it isn't working on right now to disk to make room to load that code or data.

And then when it pauses working on that, it will swap it to disk to make room to load the next thing it needs to work on, and so on.

That is extremely time and energy intensive wasted work - high swap mean there's not enough RAM and the computer is working overtime just trying to get code and data loaded into RAM.

Well, huh, it seems my eyes are getting old and I misread the swap number. My bad. 8GB is still too low for running Sequoia and being able to run multiple apps, though - but your baseline system with almost nothing installed is actually performing OK RAM-wise.

That being the case, the next thing to consider is the number and variety of crashes you have had since reinstalling. This takes us back to steve626's suggestions. Failing SSD is less likely (but not impossible). Something with the logic board or RAM modules is more likely. If it's the RAM, then no big deal - logic board would be bad.