Render engine maintenance guide
It's important to keep the render machines in the best possible condition. Go through the following steps:
Essentials - daily
Recommended - once every quarter or if the render machine becomes unstable
For the setup of your render engines check out our Hardware and software environment guide
Essentials
Windows updates
Make sure that all the latest system updates are installed, and there are no pending installations requiring the machine to restart or potentially halt productions.
System restart
Do a full system restart to flush the memory, correct third-party software glitches and halt potential memory leaks.
System temperature
Check that you have an acceptable temperature on the essential hardware components like CPU, GPU and Video I/O card.
CPU: > 90°C
GPU: > 80°C
Video I/O: >80°C
Recommended
Update your Nvidia drivers. See Nvidia driver installation
Remove unneeded Third-party software
Optional
Hard drive check, you can use WD Data lifeguard diagnostic tool to check for bad sectors and errors
Disk defrag of regular disk drives
Stress Test the system
Run a heavy scene with video input and output, while keeping an eye on system stability and temps
Third-Party Software
We recommend as clean a system configuration as possible. To ensure that there is minimum of unnecessary interference and resource usage we suggest to
remove unneeded software
only have essential programs start with Windows
Control which applications start up when starting a Pixotope machine
Go the Task Manager
Navigate to the “Startup” tab
Right click and choose "Disable" for any unneeded application
List of applications
Video conferencing and remote desktop software
Zoom, Google Hangouts, TeamViewer, Anydesk, etc
Background services - can interfere with network and hard drive bandwidth
Dropbox, Adobe Creative Cloud
Heavy duty applications - uses considerable GPU and RAM resources which can interfere with operations
Photoshop, Premiere, Substance painter, 3DSMax, Maya, Blender, etc