Oshyan was right!

Started by zaxxon, November 19, 2012, 06:43:12 PM

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zaxxon

Right from my initial use of T2 I experienced some crashes during renderings that were taking over several hours to complete. Oshyan advised that this was probably due to CPU overheat. Not I, not my machine, I said, I monitor that! Oh well. Osyan thank you, you were spot on. I installed a free utility called 'realtemp' and low and behold at 100% load (i7 920 4 core) the temp rose to 97c. So I just purchased a Corsair H100 liquid cooling system that claims to keep the CPU temp at 66c at 100% load. Having gone thru the support conversations here on the forum regarding freezes and lock-ups, heat was often indicated as the culprit. So first chance I'll install the cooler. I did test a similar situation with a Vue render and the temp range soared to an unstable range as well. It does appear that Vue was not as 'sensitive to the heat build-up, so no freezes. Even with this possible 'cure' in hand, I still wish T2 had a pause render/save and resume render from save feature. Not a complaint, just wishing.

jo

Hi,

TG2 is certainly processor intensive and it does tend to show up any weaknesses in cooling. One thing I'd like to mention is that you said Vue doesn't seem to be as sensitive to heat build up. You've got that kind of backwards. Software is not more or less sensitive to heat build up. What's happening is your hardware is getting too hot to be able to function correctly, due to inadequate cooling. That causes the software to fail. The software is what's causing it to get hot by asking it to execute many instructions, for sure. However I would say there is virtually no software out there which monitors the hardware temperature while it's running and then slows itself down to try and bring the temperature back to more suitable levels. The operating system does something like that when it makes fans run faster to aid cooling, as an example, but I've never come across any applications which do it. This is definitely a hardware issue and not a software one.

Regards,

Jo

Oshyan

Glad to hear you were able to trace the problem, though it's unfortunate that it did show your cooling setup wasn't quite up to the job. I would guess other software would manifest the same issue sooner or later, in some situation. On the positive side, it's a good thing that TG takes all the resources it can, to provide maximum performance, right? ;)

Regarding application throttling and CPU temp handling, there *are* 3rd party apps that can dynamically throttle application priority, core assignment, etc. based on various factors. Process Lasso is one, Process Tamer another I believe.

- Oshyan

zaxxon

It's actually a good thing that this temp issue was exposed by Terragen 2, I have had other software crash on 'overnight' renders, but most were 'recoverable'. However, I really didn't connect the cause with the failure. So since I run this machine constantly under high loads it was only a matter of time as Jo pointed out that the hardware was going to fail (terminally!). I was perplexed as the machine is well ventilated and has an excellent 3rd party cpu fan, but after some online rsearch saw that liquid cooling solutions were reasonable in cost (under a 100 US dollars), and promised an operating temp range well within safe limits. BTW it was not my intent to unfavorably contrast T2 with any other rendering software, I bought the software and am here to learn how to use it and join in what appears to be the most supportive user base and support staff in the industry.

PabloMack

#4
Hi zaxxon. Do you have a motherboard that supports fan speed control? My motherboard has fan power connectors that support both fixed speed and variable speed fans. I think you can plug a variable speed fan into a fixed speed plug and vice versa and end up with no fan speed control. I lucked out and got it right. When my CPU load goes up and the room is warm, I hear my fan speed go up and it sounds like it is working harder. Right now, though, it is cold in the room and the fans are loafing because a cold front came through while my CPU utilization is pegged out at 100%.

zaxxon

I installed a Corsair H100 liquid cooler, and now I'm very cool!  8). But compared to several other CPU intensive programs on this machine, T2 really commands the fullest performance from the hardware. Glad you had a solution at hand.