How to throttle Iray so it takes less system resources
Qliphoth
Posts: 14
So, my computer's resource usage when I'm rendering has been causing it to take so much power that I'm kinda tripping the breaker for the circuit it's on (all the circuits do this sadly). So I've been thinking, maybe, if I throttle the renderer back then the system load won't hit that critical point? I just kinda don't exactly know how to do that.
Can anyone possibly point me in the right direction on that one? I just wanna throttle Daz's Iray render processes to, like, half it's current load as a better safe than sorry. I know my renders will take longer but it's a trade off I can deal with it if means my computer stops tripping breaker circuits any time I try to render something.
In the end I'm looking to slow the render down to lessen resource use without sacrificing render quality to any noticeable degree.
Thank you in advanced for your time.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Get a UPS
Got one. I trip it too. Working on getting a more powerful one to see if that helps, but at this point I'm likely to want to throttle the renderer at least some from here on anyways just so I KNOW this isn't an issue again. Yup, I've gotten that fed up with this problem.
That sounds more like an electrical fault. A UPS wouldn't necessarily help unless it was one that takes utility power, turns it to DC to charge the battery and then inverts the DC back to AC.
What size PSU do you have ?
Steve.
I have a 750 PSU. As for the home circuits, well, to be fair the house is old, stuff didn't take this much power when it was built and I typically wouldn't have gotten this powerful of a rig knowing that, but this computer was a gift so I ended up with one a bit beyond what I typically would have. Never thought that could be an actual problem, but apparently I was wrong!
You can't throttle iray in any useful manner.
What kind of GPU do you have? What are the other items are in the system drawing power? A 750W PSU is on the low end if you have a high end GPU or multiple GPU's.
Well you can open task manager, all processes and right click on DAZ studio, set affinity to uncheck some cores
won’t throttle the GPU though
That may happen in mining rigs with lots of cards. But it means you have a over-loaded PSU set. PSUs work best at about 60-70% load. You may also underclock your GPUs with any overclocking utility.
A circuit-breaker can/should handle 15-20 amps. (Depending on your house setup. It should say on the breaker.) However, it may share other devices... Lights, TV, Monitor, Fans, etc... (Not only in your room. Some are joined/shared. Old houses are nutorious for overloading the number of outlets on one breaker. Hope it is not so old that it has "aluminum wiring"... The further you are from the circuit-breaker, the lower the voltage, and the higher the amps will be.)
The card should be using less power than playing a game. It only uses the "Cuda-cores", which is only about 1/3 of the power consumed by the card. However, your CPU (offering almost nothing to the job), consumes about 10x more power, relatively, for the 0.01%-0.10% gain in rendering speed.
I suggest the following...
1: Turn off CPU rendering. (Turn off one card, if you have multiple cards rendering.)
2: Turn off any "Other things" in your room, which may contribute to the power-load on that circuit breaker.
3: Consider moving your computer to a location with a larger circuit-breaker, or a dedicated circuit-breaker, or have a larger breaker installed. (I assume you have the minimum of 15 amps, and 20 amps is "code".) {20 amps * 120 watts = 2,400 watts},{15 amps * 120 volts = 1,800 watts}
4: Consider turning off your monitor, speakers and upgrading to only SSD drives, to save more power. (Normal HDDs consume a LOT of power, even being idle. SSDs consume almost nothing.)
If you are still tripping breakers, then you may have a bad PSU and it is "shorting-out", under stress, tripping the breaker until it cools and the thermal breaker in the PSU resets. This can also happen if you don't have the correct power-wire coming out of the PSU to the WALL. Many of those cords are only rated for 10 amps, not 15 amps or 20 amps. (I am not sure of your whole setup.)
You may also be overheating your cards, if you don't have your "cooling setup" software set correctly. It should be on "max cooling", not "quiet mode" or "economy mode". If the card shorts, due to thermal overheating, or the PSU, it will also trip the internal overheat protection, on the card, which can cause the PSU to trip, to save the computer from damage.
The only way to throttle the card would be with under-clocking the card, so it runs slower. (And with less voltage.) The CPU can also be throttled, in your system settings for "power savings". You can set a "maximum power use" and a "minimum power use", to make it run faster instead of idling too low and limit overheating and power draw, by avoiding running the CPU at 100% power. (Mine is 25% minimum and about 90% maximum, for a nice safety-net. I have 36 logical processors, or 18 cores... I have plenty of processing power, without running it at 100%. Even still, CPU does almost nothing to my render-times.)
Thanks everyone, and thank you JD_Mortal, I know my PSU is good because the first thing I did was test that puppy, and sadly we're renting so, while I would update that breaker if I could, because that thing needs it it hasn't been updated since the late 70's and we may have that horrid aluminum wiring for all I know, I can't. My room (which my health mostly limits me to) is also, you guessed it, fartherest from the breaker. I do have two different circuits in my room, one on half the outlets and the light, the other handles the other half of the outlets, but let us be honest, a tube TV, stereo system and atari were all the electricians ever thought these circuits were gonna have to withstand.
Consitering all those factors, underclocking sounds like my best bet since there since to be no way to throttle Iray back specifically and I have ruled out most other possible issues, well at least the ones something can be done about, based on your list. Some of my higher end games will do it too as will a few of my other programs when I stress them juuuust right so yeah, just underclocking the CPU and GPU right out sounds like my best bet.
Don't bother with the CPU unless you keep having trouble, most CPU's draw less than half what the GPU does.
Do you have a hair dryer to test your wiring with? Most are between 1000 and 1500 watts. If that trips your breaker then you need to have your wiring updated. Which is not cheap. If it dioesn't, then your computer is doing something weird. A 750 watt PSU should not be able to trip a circuit breaker, unless it's sharing a circuit with a space heater or something else power hungry.