Game Crashing after 5 minutes of gameplay (real time) - screen frozen, clock stopped, sims frozen...

Not sure I understand the new question. You are on Patch 1.69? If you have no EPs selected now, then only the base game should load. Maybe Origin is now confused for some reason, if this is how you must start up. But either way, with the EPs or without, let's see how the game runs and if the CPU usage is still so outrageously high and of course you can check for EP content once you are in the game to see if it's all really there.