Rendering completely freezes and deadlocks my computer

I’m on 2.79 and I’ve made my most complex object thus far (which, to be fair, isn’t nearly as complex as a model could be). I was excited to render it out knowing that it would probably take longer than usual. Every time I start the rendering process the computer inadvertently locks up so that I can’t even kill Blender with ctrl+alt+delete. Not even the mouse cursor moves.

I looked at ways to shorten render times and tried to employ those. I set up my scene and started the render and then went to lunch. I came back an hour later to see that nothing had changed. According to Blender it would’ve taken 38 minutes but it seems like it didn’t even get to the actual rendering process because it was still sitting at 0% and locked up. This forces me to do hard shut downs, which make me feel like I’m slowly killing my computer.

My specs are:

Operating System
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 4790 @ 3.60GHz
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 799MHz
Graphics
1023MB NVIDIA Quadro K420 (HP)

Any tips on how to fix this are welcome. Thank you.

Can thermal issues be ruled out?
Other than that: We will need more info on the scene (render settings etc.)…

PVSB6.blend (4.7 MB)

Here’s the file I’m working with.

before geo is generated for rendering - waaay tooo much modifiers active (majority runs on single core)

also

rendering on your poor GPU could lock display and all else
render with CPU (set/leave one core for further use)
& forget about rendering with your GPU

At what point should you start rendering with your GPU? The specs above are from my work PC. My home PC has 8 gb of RAM but my graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti with 3071MB of memory.

Your GPU will render faster but in the case of this model 3GB will not be enough and you will have to use your CPU.

As @burnin said, you have lots of modifiers active. Do you really need subsurf at render level 6?

here ([email protected]), did a quick run through

  • simplified, reordered modifiers
  • set smooth shading (instead of flat)
  • set better materials/shaders
  • set better lighting (IBL - DresdenSquare from HDRIHaven), shadow catcher & custom background color

runs & renders better now

PS
I was looking at your quadro specs :stuck_out_tongue: GTX780 is fine

Also to consider

  • scale (1:1 real units for proper rendering - lighting & camera values & modeling, modifying)
  • scene organization/management (order, name, join, apply modifiers, simplify, save iterations…)
  • not everything was look into
  • joined, turnaround version: bench_PVSB6solo.7z(@zippyshare)

Wow, you’re brilliant. This is a lot of info to absorb. I’ll have to look into each one of these points and do some more learning. Thanks for the render and the cool gif!

My Computer Specs:
Desktop (Custom built computer)
OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU: AMD FX-8350 8-Core
GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 Ti
RAM: 12GB
MB: MSI 970A-G46
HDD: 1x Seagate 1TB 64MB Cache 7200 rpm 6GB/s Sata (Main Drive)
2x Seagate 2TB 64MB Cache 7200 rpm 6GB/s Sata

I’ve tried contacting Microsoft support (12 times), but I’ve exhausted their troubleshooting list and they don’t know what the problem could be.