Blue Screen of Death When Rendering

[Aaron Star]

Do you get the same BSOD if you disable GPU rendering under options in Vegas?

Try a test project with footage rendered to XDCAM-EX and see if you crash then.

Blue Screen is usually hardware. Memory, device driver or a peripheral that the device driver is running, could be a bad motherboard. Verify you have the latest driver for the Chipset, SATA controller, GPU, Audio, and Network.

Next get a tool like Speccy or something that monitors temperature. During render or before the BSOD watch the temps on the GPU and CPU, make sure they are not overheating.

Get a copy of MemTest86 and verify the RAM at least one pass. Make sure in BIOS that you are not over clocking the memory or CPU.

I would verify that the GPU is interfacing the motherboard at 16x speed and not 4 or 8x. Most systems will knock the pcie bandwidth in half if you have an add on board in a wrong slot. You want maximum bandwidth path between memory, cpu, and gpu. The 1st page of gpu-z will tell you the interface speed, when you roll your mouse over the slot speed. Some USB-3 implementations steal PCI lanes for “Turbo mode,” disabling turbo mode can free up the GPU for 16x operation.

One last thing to check would be DPC Latency. Google DPC Latency Checker. The DCP latency of the machine should not be running in the red, nor should you be seeing spikes into red. You should be seeing a relatively flat, continuous line in the 500(Green) to 1500(yellow.) If you see spikes that repeat on interval, or mainly red indicators across the board, then you have a system driver that needs to be disabled / updated to remedy the problem.

LatencyMon – is another more complex view
Windows Performance Analyzer – also offers this view under Computation.

With GPU enabled in Vegas:

You can monitor GPU with gpu-z or “amd system monitor” When the time line is at speed, you should be seeing the gpu being used, but not necessarily at 100%. In fact you should not see more than about 50-75% for smooth playback. 75%+ gpu while playback, and you most likely need a stronger gpu.

[Graham Bernard]

Aaron makes some great points. Do follow his advice.

Tell me, what is the size of your PSU? Is it from another system?

Grazie

Video Content Creator and Potter
PC 7 64-bit 16gb * Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core 3.40GHz * 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti
Cameras: Canon XF300 + PowerShot SX50HS Bridge

[Eric Daley]

Aaron,

Thanks for your response. First– my GPU is up to date, as is my audio. Not sure what a SATA Controller is.

So, I spent all day on this. With breaks, I tried to render my project four times, each time it crashed. So, I took off the cover of the tower and cleared out a lot of the dust. I then sucessfully rendered “Part 1” of my project.

But then, I decided to render “part 2” which is also around 16 minutes long. I had Speccy and DPC Latency running.

Speccy showed the CPU getting to 89c and then at about 25 minutes later, when the render was 80% done, it reached 90c and bounced to 91 and 92, back to 89 pretty regularly. DPC was in the green the entire time.

The project got to 95% and CRASH. No BSOD though. The monitor just went black and when it came back, it showed the boot screen then went to Log In.

So, it appears I’ve got an overheating problem. And, I’m worried. I don’t really understand the cooling system I have. But, obviously, it’s not doing it’s job. Here’s a screenshot of Speccy if it’s any use to you. I snapped this maybe two minutes before it crashed.

[Dave Osbun]

You have liquid cooling and the system is overheating during rendering??
I would immediately contact the company you purchased it from and send it back for repairs/reconfigured.

Dave

[Eric Daley]

I’ve gone ahead and emailed IBUYPOWER.

This was what I was worried about… the ONE THING… that the liquid cooling would give me issues. And here we are.

I’ve only had the system for 5 1/2 months. I’m not looking forward to packing this system up and all of that. Ugh.

[Aaron Star]

Sounds like maybe the water pump is not working (flowing) or there may be a gap/poor contact between the water block and CPU. In shipping things can come loose, make sure you have a good seat/contact with the CPU. the pump should make some noise as these things are not totally silent.

[Dave Osbun]

If the CPU isn’t over-clocked, liquid cooling is completely unnecessary.

And honestly, an over-clocked PC wouldn’t really give any sizeable performance over the base CPU voltage.

Dave

[Eric Daley]

Tech Support wanted me to reapply the CPU thermal Paste. I don’t know much about it, but does it sound right I’d need to reapply that after only 5 months? I could probably do it, but I told them I wasn’t really comfortable with that. I’m sending it back to them to troubleshoot.

I’m really nervous because I had heard IBUYPOWER was a hit or miss… But mine has worked great up until now.

As for the liquid cooling, as I remember, that was the only type of “cool down” mechanic offered with the specific case I was getting. (Which I’m probably wrong about…)

I just don’t know if this is a case of a faulty product, it not being powerful enough, or what.

It’s just really frustrating that you pay a lot of money for a dream machine and it breaks.

Now I’m on my 3 year old laptop and can’t so any editing. :/

[Wayne Waag]

“Tech Support wanted me to reapply the CPU thermal Paste.”

This really sounds completely ridiculous. Even with stock cooling, your temps should not get that high. I have an older 3700k i7 that’s OC’d from 3.5 to 4.3 Ghz and air cooling works well–never above 70 deg C. during long renders. I’ve only had a BSOD once during the summer, backed the OC down to 4.2 and all was well. Although a hassle, your vendor should bear the responsibility.

wwaag

[Eric Daley]

It’s too bad I hadn’t measured temps before. I’ve rendered maybe, 10 or so projects on this machine. It just starting giving me trouble in March. I haven’t tampered with it at all. So, I don’t know. Hopefully they can determine what the problem is. I just hope they’re not shady and try to tell me it’s fine. I’m shipping it out Monday, most likely.