Computer Crash Craziness

RCDeschene

Good God! Lately I've been having nothing but laptop crashings all week every time I try to pull off a high quality render. Sometimes it takes over five times just to get my images to process all the way through, and this is with my cooling pad roaring at full power, too! Also, as I've mentioned in threads involving Map Transfers, my system simply roasts with the hour long converting processes.

I have a CyberPowerPC brand Gaming Notebook of almost three years now. It's a 64-bit with 8 GB of RAM with an NVIDIA GeForce as my video card. Does anyone anyone else get this problem?

kyoto kid

...OK,

--How many exhaust vents does it have (most notebooks only have the one on the left side that also doubles as an intake)
--What are you attempting to render and with what render engine?
--How "big" is the scene polycount wise, and how heavy is the scene with transparency maps and/or reflectivity?

Also, do you have a process monitor like CPUID? You might want to keep an eye on the temps of the CPU for if they get to high, the process will crash.

Totte

If you are using lots of high res textures and HD morphs, 8GB is not much. My DS sometimes chews over 20GB when rendering.

RCDeschene

Kyoto Kid said:

...OK,

--How many exhaust vents does it have (most notebooks only have the one on the left side that also doubles as an intake)
--What are you attempting to render and with what render engine?
--How "big" is the scene polycount wise, and how heavy is the scene with transparency maps and/or reflectivity?

Also, do you have a process monitor like CPUID? You might want to keep an eye on the temps of the CPU for if they get to high, the process will crash.

How do I find all of that out?

frank0314

Sounds like an over heating problem. Look on the bottom of the laptop and see if your vents are clogged and also the vent on the side of the laptop. My son had a laptop that was very sensitive to this. If there was the slightest bit of dust in it it would act up. You can also go to task manager/processes during a render and see how much RAM DAZ Studio is using to that render and that will tell you if it's a memory problem.

kyoto kid

RCDeschene said:

Kyoto Kid said:

...OK,

--How many exhaust vents does it have (most notebooks only have the one on the left side that also doubles as an intake)
--What are you attempting to render and with what render engine?
--How "big" is the scene polycount wise, and how heavy is the scene with transparency maps and/or reflectivity?

Also, do you have a process monitor like CPUID? You might want to keep an eye on the temps of the CPU for if they get to high, the process will crash.

How do I find all of that out?

...look at the sides and back, if there is only one vent, it should be on the left side. Some game notebooks (usually the pricier models) have intake vents on the front under where the touch pd is and exhaust vents in the back.

Are you rendering in studio's native 3DL, LuxRender (via Reality or Luxus), or Octane (via the Daz - Octane plugin)?

How "busy" or large is the scene. Are there a lot of characters, plants, hair content, reflective surfaces, SSS, or a lot of high resolution textures. Are you using any HD content or IBL (UberEnvironment)?

I have received high memory use warnings (usually with Reality/Lux) even with 12GB memory. Once 3DL scene I was rendering once pegged at 10.5 GB.

CUPID is free utility you can download that monitors your system's core, drive, and GPU temps.

http://www.cpuid.com/ You need to DL the one named HWMonitor 1.26.

RCDeschene

Oh trust me, it is a RAM problem. The Performance is maxed out.

As for everything else, here are a series of images just taken via digital camera and screenshots, as well as the image that's been giving me grief, in the attachments:

Subtropic Pixel

Is that dust in that one picture?

I have learned the hard way that I need to blast out my heatsinks with canned-air at least twice yearly. If you have gone three years without doing this, then I'd be pretty certain you probably need to schedule this. Yes, with laptops too. In fact, ESPECIALLY with laptops, and even more so if you place them anywhere near people, clothing, tissue or paper towels, linens, paper, or animals, especially cats, dogs, or birds. Birds constantly clean themselves and produce mounds of dander; way more than you would ever imagine, and more than two whole people would generate! Yes, even if you think there's no way they can get dusty inside, your laptop is likely choking on your skin, hair, and underwear. :sick:

I know how to disassemble my computers, so it's no big deal for me. For a laptop, you only need to remove enough parts to have access to the fan and heatsink pathway with the long strawlike nozzle of the canned-air container. If you are unable/uneasy doing this, then you may need to find a qualified service shop to open it up and give it a good blast.

Some laptops, such as the big Asus gaming laptops (which are fabulous for rendering when you don't have access to a workstation) will have TWO sets of fans and heatsinks, one for the CPU and another set for the GPU. Clean them both and don't breathe that cloud of crap that comes out of there, unless you like breathing human skin and dog or cat hair. Ewwww!

Taoz

Instead of expensive canned air, buy one of these pumps used to blow up inflatable swinningpools and stuff like that. I gave $9 for this one in ALDI (with 3 years warranty) and even though it's only 12 cm high it's incredibly powerful, much more than canned air (which actually isn't air, but some kind of gas). Simply perfect for cleaning PCs for dust.,
-

Subtropic Pixel

I have one of those swimming pool pumps. Yes, they can be powerful, but you won't get the force unless you happen to have a nozzle with a narrow enough aperture. I prefer canned air, which doesn't have to be expensive. Amazon is your friend. Local computer stores sometimes sell them in 3-packs at a discount.

And they usually come with a long (6-8 inches) straw that can help you get into the smallest spaces.

Also, when the laptop is opened up, have the technician look at the fit of the heatsink over the chip it's supposed to be cooling. Sometimes hold-down screws come loose, and thermal material can get dried out and even fall away. So you might find a situation where the dust buildup isn't too bad but the heatsink is not making good contact with the components.

Another point in favor of opening up the case and getting "eyes on" the situation. You have to ask yourself, did this PC behave like this with comparable sized projects when the PC was new three years ago? If the answer is "no", then maybe it's a physical problem, and not one of memory or software gremlins.

SlimerJSpud

Opening up a laptop is generally beyond the skills of a lot of people, but if you are up for it, that might be a real fix. Nowadays, you can generally find a disassembly video on YouTube for any normal model, or one quite close to it. As further evidence of the need for this, I submit this page. Although it is about desktops, you'll get the idea. I've always considered computers to be low-speed vacuum cleaners...
Caution! True horrors await below!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/26/ventblockers_2?page=3

Taoz

Subtropic Pixel said:

I have one of those swimming pool pumps. Yes, they can be powerful, but you won't get the force unless you happen to have a nozzle with a narrow enough aperture. I prefer canned air, which doesn't have to be expensive. Amazon is your friend. Local computer stores sometimes sell them in 3-packs at a discount.

And they usually come with a long (6-8 inches) straw that can help you get into the smallest spaces.

I have tried compressed air, was disappointed by the lack of pressure and the narrow jet. Then I bought a $100 mini compressor, that was disappointing too. This pump here however does the job.

There are probably different types of these pumps, some may be more powerful than others, but the one here is impressive, even without any of the hoses. It's also very noisy, sounds like a jet engine. I use the medium 15 mm nozzle, that gives the most pressure. You can also put a hose on the nozzles so you can get into small spaces.