Ok, given all the information you have provided I would say your PNY NVME dive is likely to be the issue. It uses a Phison PS5016-E16 controller. Some other NVME drives using these cheaper Phison controllers are known to be problematic in macOS.
Logical step to test to see if this is the cause of your issues would be to remove your current PNY macOS drive and install macOS on another drive. Use an SSD or NVME, doesn’t matter which as long as the drive is one with a known compatibility for working with macOS. Western Digital/SanDisk are the most compatible as Apple use similar drives from this company in their systems.