PC Crashing/Rebooting Using 3D Programs?
polycounter lvl 6
Short Version/ TL;DR:
I thought I'd ask the question here since most of us use 3D apps daily. Have you experienced computer crashes while working with 3D programs like Unreal Engine or Maya? Sometimes I will be working and the next click BOOOM, black screen. I have to reset with power button cause no inputs work. Or worse the PC shuts itself off and restarts. Sometimes it resets as if nothing happened, no error message. Or it forces a disk check or has the fans spinning like crazy.
Looking online it seems gamers have the same issues, but there's so many things that could be wrong like graphics card, overheating, PSU, etc. Overuse? Running these programs 10-16 hours a day? Poor electricity in the house? Has this happened to other 3D artists or studios and what have you done?
Backstory:
Last year when I was getting into heavy usage of UDK, my computer started to crash a lot. I had a gt420 at the time and only 300watt PSU (4 years old). It was time to get a new graphics card anyways to be able to use UE4, so I got a GTX780 and a 850 Watt Corsair PSU. Kept other components cause they were fine (i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz, 8GB ram). It was working great again, but got to high temp like 65 a lot using UE4. Still had no crashes for months.
But my apartment has the worst electricity, especially during winter. Our fuse breaks a lot, might have broke 3 times. Usually cause somebody used a hairdryer or turned on a heater. I have a surge protector and nobody else's computer is messed like mine, so it's probably irrelevant, but usually a couple of days after the fuse broke I experience crashing using UE4.
It basically happens over time. So I might be using UE4 for 3 hours and then it crashes. But next it's only 20 minutes of use. And then it starts to crash using Maya or less intense 3D (even Photoshop was fine until I click the 3D views). Then it got to the point even using windows explorer crashed. Usually it crashes after mouse click, but it started to just shut down on idle no input...
So I figured it was the overheating problem and got a better case/cooling system. Got an SSD and reinstalled Windows 8.1 cause it happened to be free through my school so why not. After this upgrade it was working like a fresh PC for 3-4 weeks. PC temps idle around 33 and usually stay at 58 under more intense use.
Then 3 days ago the fuse breaks again cause some heater overloaded the circuit. I used UE4 and Maya 2 days ago for light stuff (some set dressing and animations). But yesterday I was playing with some intense particle effects from the Cave Demo and my surge protector was making some beeping noise. So I turned off realtime rendering and it stopped. But later I opened another scene and my PC black screens/reboots after clicking in viewport.
So I restart and think WTF. I'm too afraid to open UE4 so get into Maya to do some modeling. An hour in and it crashes. I try again and it crashes. So I just gave up and drew in Photoshop rest of night, woke up (today) and tried Maya again. Black screen. Crash. So I wrote my elective paper and with that finished I am writing this. Just so frustrating cause I have to finish my final project in 3D and want to make a 3D portfolio so I can do 3D art but this fracking PC won't let me do just that urgggh. It's hard enough to juggle art design and tech problems to solve, but when the computer shuts down and destroys the work at no warning it's ridiculous.
Just after I think this issue has been fixed it comes back. The oldest parts are the motorboard/CPU so there's a possibility. But my PC does do fine with them. Logic points to the GPU cause the crashes start with heavy GPU usage. Could be a power problem as well. Or it could be a driver issue. I'm going to try reinstalling windows again completely cause it won't take long and see if that fixes. But if it doesn't, dunno, might just pay a tech guy to check it out cause I have no idea when it comes to hardware. Also can't just RMA without knowing if it actually is the GPU. Sucks cause I enjoyed 3D a lot and I like all the aspects of game dev and art but this computer stuff pisses me off so much. I dread to open the 3D programs and had to get back into sketching to get excited about this stuff again. Got to give props to you guys who make legit 3D artwork cause it's hard enough to develop the discipline, knowledge and skills to do this and then there is stuff like. If you've read this far and felt the pain, feel free to relieve your sorrows with me here as we fight against the tools of our trade which wish evil upon us. Or offer constructive advice.
I thought I'd ask the question here since most of us use 3D apps daily. Have you experienced computer crashes while working with 3D programs like Unreal Engine or Maya? Sometimes I will be working and the next click BOOOM, black screen. I have to reset with power button cause no inputs work. Or worse the PC shuts itself off and restarts. Sometimes it resets as if nothing happened, no error message. Or it forces a disk check or has the fans spinning like crazy.
Looking online it seems gamers have the same issues, but there's so many things that could be wrong like graphics card, overheating, PSU, etc. Overuse? Running these programs 10-16 hours a day? Poor electricity in the house? Has this happened to other 3D artists or studios and what have you done?
Backstory:
Last year when I was getting into heavy usage of UDK, my computer started to crash a lot. I had a gt420 at the time and only 300watt PSU (4 years old). It was time to get a new graphics card anyways to be able to use UE4, so I got a GTX780 and a 850 Watt Corsair PSU. Kept other components cause they were fine (i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz, 8GB ram). It was working great again, but got to high temp like 65 a lot using UE4. Still had no crashes for months.
But my apartment has the worst electricity, especially during winter. Our fuse breaks a lot, might have broke 3 times. Usually cause somebody used a hairdryer or turned on a heater. I have a surge protector and nobody else's computer is messed like mine, so it's probably irrelevant, but usually a couple of days after the fuse broke I experience crashing using UE4.
It basically happens over time. So I might be using UE4 for 3 hours and then it crashes. But next it's only 20 minutes of use. And then it starts to crash using Maya or less intense 3D (even Photoshop was fine until I click the 3D views). Then it got to the point even using windows explorer crashed. Usually it crashes after mouse click, but it started to just shut down on idle no input...
So I figured it was the overheating problem and got a better case/cooling system. Got an SSD and reinstalled Windows 8.1 cause it happened to be free through my school so why not. After this upgrade it was working like a fresh PC for 3-4 weeks. PC temps idle around 33 and usually stay at 58 under more intense use.
Then 3 days ago the fuse breaks again cause some heater overloaded the circuit. I used UE4 and Maya 2 days ago for light stuff (some set dressing and animations). But yesterday I was playing with some intense particle effects from the Cave Demo and my surge protector was making some beeping noise. So I turned off realtime rendering and it stopped. But later I opened another scene and my PC black screens/reboots after clicking in viewport.
So I restart and think WTF. I'm too afraid to open UE4 so get into Maya to do some modeling. An hour in and it crashes. I try again and it crashes. So I just gave up and drew in Photoshop rest of night, woke up (today) and tried Maya again. Black screen. Crash. So I wrote my elective paper and with that finished I am writing this. Just so frustrating cause I have to finish my final project in 3D and want to make a 3D portfolio so I can do 3D art but this fracking PC won't let me do just that urgggh. It's hard enough to juggle art design and tech problems to solve, but when the computer shuts down and destroys the work at no warning it's ridiculous.
Just after I think this issue has been fixed it comes back. The oldest parts are the motorboard/CPU so there's a possibility. But my PC does do fine with them. Logic points to the GPU cause the crashes start with heavy GPU usage. Could be a power problem as well. Or it could be a driver issue. I'm going to try reinstalling windows again completely cause it won't take long and see if that fixes. But if it doesn't, dunno, might just pay a tech guy to check it out cause I have no idea when it comes to hardware. Also can't just RMA without knowing if it actually is the GPU. Sucks cause I enjoyed 3D a lot and I like all the aspects of game dev and art but this computer stuff pisses me off so much. I dread to open the 3D programs and had to get back into sketching to get excited about this stuff again. Got to give props to you guys who make legit 3D artwork cause it's hard enough to develop the discipline, knowledge and skills to do this and then there is stuff like. If you've read this far and felt the pain, feel free to relieve your sorrows with me here as we fight against the tools of our trade which wish evil upon us. Or offer constructive advice.
Replies
Afterwards if the problem still remains, I'll stick ubuntu on a usb drive and boot from that, then test some kind of intensive application. If the crashing continues, then that means it is likely a hardware related issue, but if it stops then you can probably bet that it's a software issue (could be drivers) so doing a format could fix the issue.
If it turns out to be a hardware issue, then you should start by removing everything that isn't absolutely essential and see if the crashes continue, then from there troubleshoot the hardware one at a time.
Most of the time for me it turns out to be driver related issues whenever I get random crashes, freezes, or shutdowns but there's no way to really tell without doing some troubleshooting. Make sure you aren't using any beta drivers as they tend to be a lot more unstable, and also make sure you keep your OS up to date. I tend to format my entire machine once every 6 months. Some people may recommend doing it more often, and some might wait longer, but from my experience it has worked great in terms of preventing software related issues.
Also, it should go without saying, but even when you aren't experiencing constant crashes, make sure to always save backups of everything. I keep backups of all my projects on an external hard drive and on the cloud. It might seem tedious but it will save you a lot of headaches in the future.
It could be electrical problems in your apartment that could be causing issues with some of your hardware, like your Power Supply. I've seen faulty power supplies cause some weird behavior with hardware.
Open your case and see if your GPU fans are kicking in. I've seen GPUs run fine on regular software but shutdown when running high intensity 3d software due to the fans not turning on to cool it off.
I'll start troubleshooting the drivers. I made a complete backup of everything during the fresh install, so might even format. Windows 8 should be faster?
Just annoying this issue has continuously popped up over the past year at the worst moments and at random, so it's hard to track where the real problem is. Could even be a combination? The worst I had before was Maya crashing and corrupting files, although I didn't start doing intense 3D game dev work until recently. It makes me wonder how the AAA studios can produce art at the level of AC Unity and The Order. They must go through some intense BS, but at least those studios would have tech teams. Can't imagine being a freelancer and putting up with this. Sorry I have to vent my frustration, going to need better cooling in that brain.
Failing that, the corrupted files thing could be almost anything but focusing on memory/cpu/hdd for that could be a place to start. I've only been working with Maya for a few years now but it does tend to crash here and there, especially when working in the UV texture editor) but I've honestly never had it corrupt a file. Maybe I've just been lucky.
Update:
So I tried some solutions online like disabling an Nvidia audio driver and turning off the windows fast startup. Then I ran some benchmarks, played Metro Last Light (which used to overheat my PC to crash) and got max temp 56C which is better than ever.
With Metro running in the background I opened my UE4 scene with all the effects, messed around and rendered a matinee with no crashes. Granted I only had UE4 open for 15 minutes. But it's weird how I'm able to do all this intense stuff now when this morning just clicking a vert caused crashes...
Looking in HWMonitor at the CPU, it has voltage at 1.276V when running UE4's intense stuff. I'm not sure what the volts are supposed to be for each part but maybe it's bad to be too high? Maybe it gets even higher during a crash.
So really don't know the solution, so far disabling the Audio driver seemed to prevent shut downs, but it could just be a coincidence.
In order of possibilities:
- apartment has poor electricity problem
- bad drivers
- old motherboard
- faulty GPU or PSU
- power issue somewhere
- mysterious spirit
- overheating
if someone else has experience with the motherboard causes issues I'm curious.
the motherboard was a lower-end model in a stable machine that went borderline unstable when i added some components. on paper the upgrades were well within spec but as i found out in due time my troubles were a well documented case on the 'net with others reporting similar issues: frequent hardware-lockups when the machine was put under load. it was all attributed to the hardware/capacitors on the board itself which were not up to the task.
replacing it with a different type of motherboard solved my problem as i recall.
since then i've always gone with either workstation-level or top tier gamer motherboards built with overclocking in mind to never stumble over stupidities like that again.