Well, I understand that as the following: PC with top components, latest technology, latest MS OS. Troubles with no end. Support is .... as usual.
soens
I'm sure when you get with the right people it will all come together. Finding those people is the hard part these days.
This.
There is no universal approach to have rock solid system running. Especially special purpose systems, like music workstations. Here unusual (for most people) low latency requirement meet unusual hardware (audio interfaces) and everything should be glued by low quantity selling cheap software (DAW). As you probably know, any single VST can crash the DAW. Any any tiny peace of hardware or related driver can crash the computer.
My approach to avoid troubles (not eliminate, just minimize the probability they hit me):
1) I try to avoid the latest technologies till I really need them or there is absolutely NO information they are worse then other. Before composing or upgrading my systems, I first check the chip-set. How many reports I can find that some particular one is looking for troubles? Of which kind? Is particular board I consider has more then usual problem reports or less? The same for other components.
2) 10m users with 10k problem reports is better then 10k users with 10 problem reports. I mean good quality office components are normally better tested and proved to work fine then "Extreme Gaming" components.
3) personal luck or un-luck with particular producers. Everything I ever had from Asus is dead. I have boards from Intel which are several times older (20+ years) then my dead Asus boards. That is personal, but I am not going to check that again. WD had good times and bad times. Some WD disks I have are 15 years old, some series was dead after 1 year (I mean not one or two, 100s of them!). But there is no choice, except not believing in "24/7"/Gold/Server. But hi speed HDD normally die faster then "normal" speed HDD.
What I mean: a priory, office i5 with fanless GPU in standard case connected to Focusrite interface or an i7 on an old proved to be ok motherboard with low end (!) gaming GPU connected to RME is less troublesome then Thunderbolt Motu connected to some "deluxe" with "make me hot" GPU. That is just my personal opinion, I do not even pretend to be right.