PC running out of RAM a lot using Max?

Zeealex

Hey all

I've been having an issue with my PC recently, its a fairly new build as my old one died rather spectactularly on me a few months back. 

It's been running out of RAM a LOT I hope you all know what I mean by running out of RAM. 

A head model I was baking the world space normal of, just 15 minutes ago took up 9gb RAM then I got the warning of "low memory, close this program" from the system, max subsequently crashed. It was a 250K HP and 2,500 poly LP, I've baked things like this before with minimal issues with my RAM, I finished baking a truck which I think totalled up into 4mil polies on the HP, 38k on the LP, seperated into 4 parts. And it never had a single problem on the same PC

It's just recently in the past 4 or so weeks this has been happening. I got substance painter which used to lock up my entire PC before I built this new one so i expected a few low memory warnings from that, I've had one, when i was running max, marmoset and substance painter all at the same time, and i was exporting 4k textures when switching programs. but at the centre of all of it is max, every time I run out of RAM, max is running. 

But for max to do it on a simple worldspace normal bake is a bit out of character. 

I'm running:
AMD FX 8320E 
16GB RAM
AMD R9 280 4gb

Running 3DSMax 2017 SP1 

I've been contemplating upgrading the RAM however I can only fit a maximum of 24gb; the 4th RAM slot is covered by the CPU fan. 

I'd appreciate ideas, I know my PC isn't the best, I don't have the money for the big rigs with massive amounts of memory and the highest end chips, and this thing certainly shouldn't be struggling with memory problems over a world space normal bake.

It earns its name 'Dory' very well at this point.

Thanks 

JedTheKrampus

Does it just happen with bakes? 2017 leaks a lot of memory and has a lot of bugs. You should at least update to SP2. Or, you could consider switching to a program with better memory hygiene.

If there's enough clearance you could always take out your motherboard, take off the heat sink and fan, wipe off the thermal paste with a paper towel and rubbing alcohol (do this by covering the opening of the bottle with the paper towel, not by pouring rubbing alcohol all over the motherboard), add in the new sticks of RAM, and repaste and reassemble the heat sink and fan. It's a lot of work, but it might be worth it to deal with Max's...substantial faults. I think 32 GB should probably be enough, even for Max.

Zeealex

just bakes yeah, no major issues with RAM being low if it's idle or if i'm modelling, only if Substance painter is active with a lot of layers but that's expected as it's RAM intensive anyway. 

I'll try baking with 2016 to see if the result is the same. in the meantime i'll also upgrade 2017 to SP2 look at some RAM options, I never thought of adding the heatsink after the RAM when I built it haha, but i don't think it would've cleared the heat spreaders, i'll try getting some low profile RAM for that slot with the same timings. Even if i just get an extra 8 in there i'll be happy

Thanks for your help!

JedTheKrampus

You could always bake with xNormal or something if Max is too crashy.

jaker3278

i had the same problem, make sure you have a lot of memory allocated to windows on your harddisks . this solved the problem for me. 

pior

Running 3DSMax 2017 SP1

Just a general piece of advice : you will save yourself a lot of trouble by simply waiting for about a year before upgrading to a recent version of the program ... and by not upgrading at all if your current version does what you need.

(sorry if that's not super helpful for your specific issue here - I'd just thought I'd mention it as it is not necessarily common knowledge).

musashidan

Pior is right, new releases of Max are more like beta versions and it usually takes another year cycle and several patches before it's stable enough for serious work. Plus every 2 releases plugins have to be recompiled which means waiting for that (for those of us whose  workflow involves a lot of plugs)

Or at the very least install SP2 pronto!

gandhics

New 2017 packing needs a lot of RAM. Check if it uses new packing methods.

For upgrade, I usually upgrade after 3-6 month since we need to wait plugins and finish the current project. Even though there are beta testers and QA, there are always a few bugs which no one caught . Usually SP1 address that. But, waiting more than year is usually meaningless since at that point there would be no SP anymore.

I think this way... you may get 10 new bugs, but if you get 50 bug fixes, that's net gain 40 less bugs.

Zeealex

alrighty, I'll switch back to 2016 and see how that goes, thanks all! 

spacefrog

Max 2017 SP2 is pretty stable. Know bugs still exist, found some obscure new bugs ( introduced in SP1 ) , but in my experience, it's already pretty usable for serious work.

musashidan

gandhics said:

New 2017 packing needs a lot of RAM. Check if it uses new packing methods.

Yes, 2017 uses a new packing algorithm. 

Zeealex

okay so I think I may have found the underlying issue, but i'm not going to speak too soon, my PC gave me a BSOD on startup with a 0x1E error, which from some research, is caused by some kind of software bug, it was on startup so most likely a driver somewhere, AFAIK, this bug causes a memory leak and can cause memory allocation issues. since the PC has recovered I've baked a 2mil highpoly to a 4k lowpoly in high quality @4096x4096 pixels with marmoset running in the background and I've had not a single issue with RAM being low. the PC has just sat there and baked away without an issue.  
I think it'll be worth checking this out in more depth. 

musashidan

So what driver was causing the error/leak?