Blender crashing halfway through CPU rendering in Blender 2.78c

EDIT: Problem solved. ASUS GPU TWEAK II was the culprit.

Hey guys, unfortunately, I am experiencing some crashes while rendering on CPU. This happens more often with tile size set to something small such as 16x16. I have deleted the Blender Foundation folder in %Appdata% and disabled all CPU and memory overclocks but still to no avail. In detail, the progress of the tiles freezes somewhat intermittently and eventually freezes. This occurs on all .blend files I’ve tested.

Only just realised this because I decided to do some testing in CPU (almost always render on GPU). Any ideas? Thank you anyway for your attention.

MB: Gigabyte Z170-HD3 (F21)
CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K
GPU1: ASUS STRIX GTX 1070 OC
GPU2: ASUS TURBO GTX 1060 6GB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (4x4 modules)
HDD: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB
OS: Windows 10 1703 64 bit

MEMORY DUMP
FULL

Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 10.0.14321.1024 AMD64
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.




Loading Dump File [C:\Users\pixel\AppData\Local\CrashDumps\blender.exe.10608.dmp]
User Mini Dump File: Only registers, stack and portions of memory are available


Symbol search path is: srv*
Executable search path is: 
Windows 10 Version 15063 MP (8 procs) Free x64
Product: WinNt, suite: SingleUserTS Personal
Built by: 15063.0.amd64fre.rs2_release.170317-1834
Machine Name:
Debug session time: Tue Jun 20 17:18:24.000 2017 (UTC + 12:00)
System Uptime: not available
Process Uptime: 0 days 0:01:38.000
................................................................
..............................................
This dump file has an exception of interest stored in it.
The stored exception information can be accessed via .ecxr.
(2970.2958): Security check failure or stack buffer overrun - code c0000409 (first/second chance not available)
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found.  Defaulted to export symbols for nvoglv64.dll - 
nvoglv64!vk_optimusGetInstanceProcAddr+0x775b8:
00000000`5c978838 cd29            int     29h



Hi.
Have you tried with nightly builds from buildbot?
(Download those of the first links, with “2.78” in the file name)
https://builder.blender.org/download/

Have you run “memtest” on machine to check the RAM health?

Thanks, YAFU. I’ve already tried the builds and the 2.79 test build and frankly have been using them quite a bit for the denoiser. Now I’ll try to run memtest.​ Thank you so much for taking interest :slight_smile:

Have you tried rendering a scene as simple as a diffuse cube on a plane, just to figure out conclusively if it really is blender at fault?
You remembered to change the user preferences to cpu rendering as well?

Can thermal issues be ruled out?

MEMTEST:
I ran the WIndows Memory Diagnostic Tool and it returned with no errors.

RENDER SIMPLE SCENE:
When rendering a simple scene with a diffuse cube on a plane, Blender did not crash. However there was still some minor intermittent freezing and as far as I can tell, if run for long enough, it would eventually crash. As soon as I made the materials more complex by making the plane glossy, adding a subdivided glossy Suzanne and made the cube use subsurface scattering, the my entire system froze after a few seconds of rendering and I had to reset it. It seems that the complexity of the rendering compounds the chance of crash instead of creating it. I saw that the intermittent freezing became more frequent in a more complex scene.

I experience no crashes or freezes in other CPU intensive activities.

SET TO CPU RENDER:
I made sure the preferences were set to CPU rendering.

THERMAL ISSUES:
My CPU at overclocked 4.6 GHz remains bellow 74C.
When not overclocked it remains under 50C but Blender or my system still ends up crashing.

Hi, can you may share the .blend?
Me and other user can test on own systems.

Cheers, mib

This issue does not appear to be .blend specific. The BMW27 file on this forum does the trick. This means that there is some localised conflict between my system and Blender.

That is not a proper memory test, as it can only test available ram rather then already allocated ram.

Use http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm , download the free version, boot from usb, test overnight see if it gives up any ram errors.

THERMAL ISSUES:My CPU at overclocked 4.6 GHz remains bellow 74C.
When not overclocked it remains under 50C but Blender or my system still ends up crashing.

remove all overclocks whilst we figure out the underlying issue. is 50C whilst it is rendering max temp or is 50C idle?

can you also try rendering with 1 thread in blender aswell? see if that triggers the issue.

The temperature values detailed are maximum recorded temperatures before the crash. I am currently running memtest and after the first pass, no errors have been detected. I shall continue to run it overnight to see whether any show up. Thank you everyone for your help, I really appreciate it :slight_smile:

I think 50C/70C is not much (if that temperature is while rendering). My i7 3770 in summer easily reaches 80C under demanding work with stock cooler.
I think the best/easy way you can get some conclusions is to try out a LiveDVD/USB from some Linux distribution.

Download some Linux distribution. Most of them can work in ‘live’ mode (Ubuntu, Linux mint, OpenSuse, etc). Download the iso, burn to a DVD and boot from the DVD. Then being on Linux in Live mode, download Blender official tar.bz2 file, unpack to a new folder. Within that folder run ‘blender’ file (double click on ‘blender’ file).

Memtest completed overnight with no errors at all. I’ve now burnt Ubuntu to a USB and live booted it from there. Blender ran flawlessly under Ubuntu; it did not crash nor did it have any noticeable freezing. It’s beginning to look like a Windows 10 issue. Unfortunately, I cannot use Linux as my primary OS and I am unwilling to dual boot so it looks as though I must now attempt a clean install of Windows.

Well, at least we have almost ruled out that this is due to a problem with the hardware.
My guess, many chances of being a Windows 10 problem. Little chance (but may be) of being a Blender for windows build problem.

Also, look in your motherboard model web site or intel CPU download web site if there is some patch or something to solve problems related to CPU in Windows 10.

PROBLEM RESOLVED

After a long and tedious series of troubleshooting, I have discovered that there is a conflict between Blender and ASUS GPU TWEAK II. Removing that completely has solved the problem. Thank you again to everyone who helped me solve this rather stressful issue.

Oh, that was not included in my guess, I think :slight_smile:

I have the same issue, ASUS board but i don’t have GPU Tweak installed.

Anytime i want to use CPU for rendering, i get that exhausting crash. However how small the tiles.

Maybe Blender should have an option that limits CPU usage to somewhere between 80 <> 95% CPU and a checkbox?

Note: It’s even worse when i use Denoizer.

Note 2: with latest release, when using CPU as a second CUDA unit, i also get the same crash… Sadly enough, i would’ve got an amazing render speed if it wasn’t of that itchy crash…

When you uses BLender in Auto-Detect Threads in the Render Properties, Blender will use 100% of the CPU. that is going to make a saturation in the behavior of Blender, and runs a crash. set the Threads in one or two Threads less than your CPU real capacity. If your CPU has 8 Cores, only set 6 or 7 not 8.

Hello.

That is not at all like that. Blender is able to use all the threads at the same time without generating any serious problems in the system or crashes in Blender. So if system crash, then there is a problem with the OS, drivers or hardware. If Blender crash, then there is a problem must be reported.

@MatthieuLeChat , A Blender Crash means you have a to open new bug report entry:

(Top left, Report Bug button under BF Blender)

But you must give all the information that is requested there when you open a new report, such as blender version, OS, hardware information and steps to reproduce the problem/crash , and sharing a scene where the problem appears.

No Blender release has the CPU + GPU feature yet. So you must being using Blender from master/buildbot. So, be careful when submitting Blender version in bug report, preferably you indicate Hash string that appears in the splash screen when you open Blender.

Edit:
Oh my… MatthieuLeChat message is old :slight_smile: