Hey guys! I just thought id share my very-very funny experience on solving issue with crashing of 3ds max and octane. Recently i've got myself a new pc for octane rendering.
XEON 2690v4
128G RAM
4xRTX2080ti
1700W PSU Enermax + 1200W PSU Cooler master
SSD + HDD
Win10pro
And of course i started rendering animations right away. Everything went cool and dandy. But at the beginning of august after all the driver updates and octane updates i started to have crashes in the kernel window and during rendering of frames. Of course i immediately contacted support and was told that it is probably lack of RAM (32 gigs at the moment of first issue) No problem i thought and got meself a set of 128 gig hyperx ram with xmp. It still crashed
Then support guy told me that it might actually be an insufficient power issue. Kinda 1700W is not really enough when denoising. Ok. I got myself a second 1200W Wattmaker PSU and dedicated 2 GPUs to it (i use a PSU synchronizer to make system start em simultaneously). Whaddya think? It continued to crash.
Then support guy told me that it is probably a GPU temperature or frequency issue. Got myself 6 more case fans. Temps are not higher than 60-70 Celsius - which is OK for blower type cards. Crashes continued.
Then support guy told me that it might actually be an issue with CPU voltage. At this moment i really started to doubt that their advice is going to help me.
So i searched and searched all the possible issues with 2080ti cards in the internet. And bumped onto a topic where a guy shared a case with 2080ti crashes while gaming on latest drivers. He suggested to downgrade to 417.71 version and told there that it helped him.
Well i did that. And ... It does not crash anymore. I did just a few tests and it crashed now and then but not as often as it did on latest drivers. For example - on newest drivers it crashed 100 out of 100 times. On 417.71 - just 1 out of 100 times. I will of course run more tests and will update this topic in the future. But i just thought to share with community and warn - please do not go for the most expensive solution if you have instabilities or crashes - JUST TRY DIFFERENT DRIVER VERSIONS FIRST!
I would really appreciate any opinion from people who has 2080ti cards and their experience .
UPD: After i downgraded the drivers it actually continued to crash but in a different manner. So i removed a second PSU, and went back to original 1700W for 4 cards. Then i got myself a power socket analyzer and made a test which has shown me that a total draw from power socket is not more than 1100-1150 during rendering for the whole PC runnning. So basically a second PSU is just not needed. 1700W is more than enough.
Luckily i have a second room which has a separate power line dedicated to heavy industrial equipment. So i got a power outlet extender and connected to a separated power socket with more than enough power.
And run a test. All went smoothly even with 2 cards dedicated for denoising.
All in all - here is a step by step analysis for those who experience crashes during rendering with denoiser put in a logical order. Probably this is applicable for all Octane plugins. Not just for 3Ds max.
1) Buy a power socket analyzer - check if the power drawn from socket is within your PSU power limit.
2) Try a different power socket (probably from another room or office) with enough juice to feed your PC.
3) Try different driver versions. Downgrade if you must.
4) Check GPU temperatures
5) Check GPU frequencies
My experiment did cost me 1000+ USD extra to my already costly machine so i just wish you all to avoid this kind of expense. Support guy just led me in a completely wrong order - buy more ram, get a new PSU etc. etc. So if devs are reading this thread - please use this kind of instruction as a primary advice for all people experiencing crashes. Please feel free to share your thoughts.