"Advice" telling me to switch to software encoding is not an answer to a bug. What's the deal?

Well, after the latest update to Premiere, it’s back to the same garbage again.  You fixed it for a while, and now ruined it again.

​@Kizzume in your original post you mentioned you got a new computer. Hardware encoding is extremely dependent on the capabilities of your GPU or CPU. It’s possible that your new system doesn’t support Hardware encoding for the exact settings (for example, that lower bitrate) that your older system did. I can’t say that for sure without knowing the exact specs of the older and newer system, but I just wanted to give some background as to why that can happen.

They usually are, but they will not be fixed within minutes or hours. It can take weeks, months or even years and may not be fixed after a decade. Encoding issues are higher on the priority list though. :)

I could not reprodue the issue you have with encoding HEVC, VBR encoding. What graphic card are you using? If Nvidia, are you using Game Ready drivers or the Studio Driver? (Always use the Studio Driver)

How are you exporting, directly from Premiere or are you using Send to Media Encoder, or?