ok, finally an update to this (been working on other stuff). It's been giving me a lot of issues, mostly the dreaded red screen. It turns out that at it's current settings, it goes red if the detail is b/w .5 and .7. It can't be an issues with the RAM, b/c I've done more complex scenes with no problems. Anyways, here's a render at .36 detail. This time, I had the candle light as a visible object, and the tree looks different (leaves) even though I didn't really change anything else.