PC running out of RAM a lot using Max?
polycounter lvl 5
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
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
Replies
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.
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!
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).
Or at the very least install SP2 pronto!
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.
I think it'll be worth checking this out in more depth.