New computer FREEZES completely during render

ShaneJ wrote on 8/17/2012, 2:33 PM

I'm a long time user of Sony Vegas. Been using since V4. Currently have V11 (x64). I've also always built my own PCs with no trouble at all. Well just last week I built a new PC, or rather upgraded my motherboard and processor, for the fourth or fifth time since I started doing this almost ten years ago. Never had an issue with Vegas until now. When I try to render a video to MPEG2 for DVD authoring, the whole computer totally freezes solid at about 5% through the render. I have rendered on an external hard drive, a secondary internal, and the main hard drive where I'm running my operating system. All same results. Doesn't matter what location I'm rendering the file to, my brand new system just totally freezes. I'm running Windows 7 x64. Reformatted my main hard drive and reinstalled Windows 7 fresh when I upgraded my hardware. The only thing I didn't upgrade was my RAM and hard drives. Those I'm using the same with my old motherboard and processor. I don't know if it could be the RAM or bad processor. But this really blows because the system is basically new with the main hardware being replaced like that. It's an AMD eight core processor.

Here are links to all the exact pieces of hardware that I'm using showing all specs. If anyone has any ideas what this could be or what I could do from here, please help me. Thanks in advance.

The first three are the new items I just got. Following those are the items I already had.

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131736

Video card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130625

Processor:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103960

Now the items I've had from my previous setup that I'm using with my current setup with the three new items above.

RAM (two sets of two):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231185

Hard drive for running operating system (Windows 7):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296

DVD burner:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151187

This is all my system consists of right now. I do not have any of my other hard drives in the computer. But the results are the same even when rendering videos from the main hard drive. Freezes up the whole computer.

Comments

MarkWWW wrote on 8/17/2012, 2:57 PM

If a system works fine for everythng else but fails part of the way through when attempting to render to MPG2 the most likely problem is a lack of cooling to the CPU.

In most cases this would be due to a build-up of dust/debris over the years on an old PC and simply blowing the dust out with a blast of compressed air will usually solve the problem.

But if it's happening on a brand new build then I would suspect that the heatsink/fan assembly was not making good thermal contact with the CPU casing. If you have a CPU temperature monitoring utility, use it to watch the temperature of the CPU when you attempt to render an mpg2 and I suspect you will find that the temperature rises to an unaccepatbly high level, at which point the system fails. If so, try disassembling and re-assembling the CPU heatsing/fan assembly - perhaps you will find that it wasn't assembled correctly the first time. (I've known people to forget to remove the protective plastic film over the heatsink thermal compound on the bottom of the heatsink).

Mark

jimsch wrote on 8/17/2012, 2:58 PM

Couple of things to try.

1) Try turning off GPU render and try to render.

2) During the render the preview monitor will show what frame number the render is on. Does it always freeze at the same point? What is happening at the frame count that the freeze occurs?

ShaneJ wrote on 8/17/2012, 5:11 PM

Hi Mark. Thank you for your response. I did in fact remove the plastic film off the bottom of the heatsink and I used a really big heatsink that has the best reviews on NewEgg. I also used quite a bit of silver thermal compound. Should be cool as ice. This is the heatsink I'm using: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065

And this is the silver compound I'm using to make contact: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100007

I will try to monitor the heat next attempt. But whenever I check the levels in the bios, they are always where they should be.

ShaneJ wrote on 8/17/2012, 5:13 PM

Thank you Jim. I will try the GPU thing. But where do I turn that off? And rendering does freeze around the same spot. Not the exact frame, but around the same time. About 5% of this particular video. Haven't tried rendering a different video or another format. Should probably try that. But this video was in fact already rendered prior to my upgrade and was fine. So I know it's not the files I'm rendering. How do I turn off GPU? I'll give that a try.

John_Cline wrote on 8/17/2012, 5:17 PM

When you say, "I used quite a bit of silver thermal compound", just exactly how much did you use? It should be a very thin layer.

ShaneJ wrote on 8/17/2012, 5:25 PM

Hi John. I didn't put too much on. It's not oozing out of the sides or anything. I put it on like an X pattern and put the heatsink on.

Byron K wrote on 8/17/2012, 9:39 PM

Shane,
In addition to the other good suggestions mentioned, you may want to watch your Task Manager and observe if the freezing happens when the memory gets to a certain point. to rule out the defecto RAM, try re-seating your RAM. If it still crashes, run the render w/ half the RAM, if it still crashes run w/ the other half.

Also a fellow forum member said that adjusting the FSB timing w/ the RAM timing helped to stabilize his system.

Quote from his post:
Subject: RE: Writing Vegas 11 off as JUNK!
Reply by: Tim20
Date: 8/15/2012 9:30:28 AM

To do that you have to know your processors front side bus speed and and your ram speed and CAS timings.

Ram should be easy to find out but you have to open up your computer and pull out a stick and check the label which would read something like SDRAM 1600 8-8-8-21. So you would set the DRAM in bios to a speed of 1600 and CAS timings to 8-8-8-21

For FSB check your system info and get the model # and check with Intel/AMD to see what the FSB speed is. In my bios when I pulled it out of "auto" it defaulted to the CPU's FSB speed

Here's the thread:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=823380&Replies=28

jimsch wrote on 8/18/2012, 5:40 AM

Options - Preferences - Video - GPU acceleration of video processing

Also you might try setting your dynamic ram to 200. The only time you need more is when doing a ram preview of your timeline.

TheRhino wrote on 8/18/2012, 8:19 AM

You can download a temperature monitoring program to see if your CPU is overheating due to improper heatsink installation. If that is OK then it could be your RAM...

I generally do not like to re-use old RAM when I install a new CPU & mainboard especially when RAM prices are low... Whether your RAM is old or new you can do some simple testing to find-out if it is causing problems. First I would try removing one stick of ram at a time and see if your system will render without freezing. (Unplug computer, remove one stick of RAM, reboot with one less stick installed... Repeat until your system renders OK...) This is how I quickly detected a bad stick of ram on one of our workstations. You can also use a memory testing program, etc. but I find it's faster just to pull a stick at a time and re-test... You can then run a MemTest program just to make sure non of the others are bad but that generally takes longer...

pilsburypie wrote on 8/19/2012, 5:40 AM

With my limited knowledge, I'm not really in a position to offer advice, but I can confirm that I too have a problem with mainconcept mpg2 with vegas pro11. I can render to mp4 but mpg 2 is a no go for me. freezes up almost instantly (vegas, not the PC)

ShaneJ wrote on 8/20/2012, 9:07 AM

Well I seem to have found the problem. Apparently it was due to overclocking. My bios was already set by default to a higher memory speed than what my RAM speed actually is.

What I did was run a memory test and the computer shut down before it was finished. When I rebooted I got an F1 error during boot and it said there was an overclocking error. Bingo. I went right into the bios and I tweaked the memory speed settings to match that of what the hardware speed of the RAM actually is, and all seems to render fine now when using Sony Vegas. Whew.

I tweaked a few other things in the bios as well to make sure everything runs at the rated performance of each piece of hardware. No more problems. Don't know why the bios was set that way by default, but it just goes to show that you must know your settings, hardware ratings, and how to properly adjust your bios as needed accordingly. I will eventually get new RAM that can handle up to the maximum of what the motherboard can handle, but at least I can use this for now with no problems. Will wait a few more paychecks before I pour more money into the computer and get the new RAM. Haha... Thank goodness this issue was only something as simple as a setting and not bad hardware.

Thank you all for your great suggestions. Still things we should probably do now and then to make sure our computers are running good to stay ahead of the game before any real errors pop up causing damage to our hardware. I may still run all those tests to make sure everything is tip top. Thanks again for all the good advice and suggestions. :)

Byron K wrote on 8/21/2012, 12:16 AM

Glad you were able to resolve the issue!! (:

pilsburypie wrote on 8/21/2012, 12:31 PM

Hmmmm, my RAM is overclocked. Memtest says its all fine, but on your findings I may just revert to stock settings. Worth a try.