Rendering with Blender Cycles freezes or reboots computer

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I’m using Blender Cycles on Ubuntu 22.04.4 to render frames of an animation, and trying to render more than a couple of frames at a time results in my computer freezing or rebooting. Running top shows that I am not coming anywhere close to maxing out my cpus, memory, or disk space. The Nvidia server shows that I am not coming anywhere close to maxing out my gpu or vram, and gpu temp peaks at around 62C. (GPU slowdown starts at 92C.)

I’m using Nvidia driver version 550.90.07 with an RTX 4070 Ti Super. The problem occurs with Optix and CUDA, and it happens when I render from the command line or from the Blender UI. I also had this problem in the past with a 2070 Super, but I didn’t have it with a GTX 980 using CUDA.

A good start would be knowing what is causing the problem. My system log contains a bunch of instances of Failed to grab modeset ownership. I don’t know if that’s helpful.

I tried adjusting Blender’s performance settings to use fewer threads and smaller tiles, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Nvidia driver. I have not tried using an older driver version.

2

Please check if this applies:
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/my-nvidia-quadro-rtx-5000-16-gb-graphics-card-is-failed-to-run-during-the-application-in-ubuntu/297409/8?u=generix

3

Thank you for the response. I ran nvidia-smi -lgc 300,1200, and then I tried rendering a batch of frames from the command line. After 40 frames, my machine rebooted. It usually freezes or reboots within 10 frames from the command line. So maybe that’s progress?

The mode of failure often is the machine freezing rather than rebooting. Blender quits advancing the rendering process, the mouse cursor won’t move, I can’t switch windows, and the gpu fans slow. Is that consistent with a power supply issue?

UPDATE: I ran the same commands about 11 hours later and was only able to render 2 frames before my computer rebooted.

4

It’s not a power supply issue. I connected a brand new 850W power supply unit and only rendered 2 frames before my computer froze.

5

This doesn’t seem to be an issue with my GPU hardware or with the driver either. Minutes after I disconnected the brand new power supply and its brand new cables, I reconnected my old power supply with its old cables, and then I was able to render more than 1,000 frames from the Blender UI and command line. Now I have no idea what could be causing this. My first thought was that one of the old cables is bad or was not firmly connected, but then I would have expected the new power supply to work.