Computer keeps shutting down every time I render...

[tfortier]

I only had that problem once with a old p4 and after cleaning the heat sinc the problem went away. If you are sure its not a dust problem then I really no idea... can you monitor your cpu temperature?

[Srek]

Overheating or bad RAM caused something like this several times in the past for me.
Cheers
Björn

[imashination]

Youve kept it dust free, does that include inside?

Also check for cables which might have shifted and are pressing against a fan, which might stop it from spinning.

Otherwise my next step would be to reseat the heatsink with fresh goop.

[biliousfrog]

possibly underpowered PSU?

Are you getting a blue screen or is it just switching off?

[Mik2121]

possibly underpowered PSU?

Are you getting a blue screen or is it just switching off?
It just switches off. But I didn't have problems before (!?). Also, yeah, I cleaned everything inside.

I can do about anything, work with lots of polygons, do big stuff in Photoshop or Illustrator, etc.. but when I start rendering something big it crashes for some reason..

[TheNeverman]

Rendering a 3D animation is a FAR more intensive task than anything you could throw at your machine with Photoshop or Illustrator. It's the duration that makes the difference...

Photoshop/Illustrator are certainly capable of pegging your CPU to 100% - but maybe a couple minutes at a time...

Rendering, depending on the complexity of the scene and the number of frames in your animation - could take hours/days - which will raise the temperature of your machine significantly. I'd definetly install some temperature monitoring software and see what's going on with your CPU.

Is this a laptop or a desktop machine?

[Vilandra]

I had this same issue with my brand new BOXX workstation. I use Cinema 4D, and when using the standard C4D engine, I didnt have any problems. However when rendering with the FinalRender and VRay engines, I could not render large scenes. The machine would throw up a quick blue screen and shut off. I thought it might have been a memory problem, so I called Boxx. After trying a few things (to eliminate the probability of a memory error) it appears that the problem was entirely related to the FR and VRay plugin.

I dont know if Mental Ray works this way, as ive never used it, but the way the C4D SDK API works, C4D has to clone the scene and transfer the data to the external render engine, thus creating twice the amount of polygons. So now my 3 million poly scene, just went to 6 million, and my memory usage in XP 32bit was already hitting the 2 gig mark.

I tried XP 64 bit, and it still would not work. Ive only got 4 gigs of RAM, and using XP 64, the memory was topping out around 3.99 gigs.

Like I said, I dont know if mental Ray works this way or not, but it sounds like what I was dealing with.

[TRick]

One Dual Quad with 16 GB FBDIMM froze only when rendering in Maxwell. Rendering in fRender or VRay (both in Max) never gave problems. All engines used 99.9 % cpu power. Putting extra cooling on the RAM solved the problem. It's now 2 years and never had problems. Very weird...everything was tested by my hardware provider !!!

[vlad]

I had this same issue with my brand new BOXX workstation. I use Cinema 4D, and when using the standard C4D engine, I didnt have any problems. However when rendering with the FinalRender and VRay engines, I could not render large scenes. The machine would throw up a quick blue screen and shut off. I thought it might have been a memory problem, so I called Boxx. After trying a few things (to eliminate the probability of a memory error) it appears that the problem was entirely related to the FR and VRay plugin.

I dont know if Mental Ray works this way, as ive never used it, but the way the C4D SDK API works, C4D has to clone the scene and transfer the data to the external render engine, thus creating twice the amount of polygons. So now my 3 million poly scene, just went to 6 million, and my memory usage in XP 32bit was already hitting the 2 gig mark.

I tried XP 64 bit, and it still would not work. Ive only got 4 gigs of RAM, and using XP 64, the memory was topping out around 3.99 gigs.

Like I said, I dont know if mental Ray works this way or not, but it sounds like what I was dealing with.

Sincerely doubt your problem was because of Vray or FR. These renderers can chew litterrally billions of polygons, in full gi, with sss, displacements and what not. Just provide them with enough ram.

[kandyRabitz22]

If a computer switches off it is probably over heating.

[DanielWray]

This post is nearly 1 month old, i'm not sure if you've found a solution.

If not, try some of these steps;

Test your memory using Memtest, or the windows vista memory tester on boot.

Monitor your hardware tempatures using an external, reliable program, anything about 80/ 90 for the CPU is dangerous and will more than likely cause the machine to restart or shut down to save it from over heating. The GPU shouldn't be a factor in this case, although it's still worth noting down the tempatures.

Also check all of your voltages, if your running an nvidia card getting Ntune will display a list of voltages and indicate if they're at acceptable levels with a green, amber or red icon. Althoug this should be fine if all of your settings are stock.

Lastly, check the power supply running to your computer, sometimes computers will run if they have a sagging power supply, if it's very slight anyway, but running the CPU at 100% will push your machine to it's limits, and if your power supply (PSU and/ or wall sock/ extension) is abit shaky then it'll definatley cause issues. I had this earlier today actaully.

Also if you can try a fresh install of either the rendering engines or the whole operating system. If you still have problems after the latter you can be sure it's a hardware fault.

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