Hi folks!
I’ve been testing smoke simulations on my new PC (3970x Threadripper, RTX 3090, 64GB of RAM), and although the sim itself is a simple smoke and flame with no forces to influence it, Blender is crashing when using 512 divisions/resolution. 256 is fine. During one test, my machine crashed, not just Blender.
I would have thought that I have enough RAM?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
I just tried 512 on a torus with a Quick Effect of Smoke, then I added flames. Just setting the value to 512 consumed 21Gb of memory. You may have to face the fact that value is too large for you machine. I also noticed that my CPU was immediately pegged. The fact that you hard crashed your machine might mean you have a minor heat issue with your CPU when under excessive load. Try testing your machine to see if it can pass the Prime95 test (free cpu stress tool).
Otherwise, try a smaller value for the resolution division size. Remember, it is the domain box that is being divided, so if you can trim in the sides for a closer fit, you can get more resolution out of a lower resolution division.
Thanks for the speedy reply! So, your test consumed 21GB of memory… where am I able to see my memory usage in Blender? And if I have 64GB but the sim uses less than that, I should be OK on the RAM front?
I’ll give the Prime95 test a whirl too, cheers!
EDIT: Sorry, meant to say… yes, I can probably trim the sides of the domain in this case. I’ll try that too.