Second Life Crashes?
I hear now and then about people who have trouble with Second Life crashing their Windows PC from time to time. There are a few reasons why this might occur, but here’s one reason that you might not think of. Heat (or maybe power).
Okay, if you can run Second Life for about 5-15 minutes, and then it crashes, or your machine locks-up, heat or power is a likely candidate for the root of the problem. Now, the Second Life client has a lot of problems, but… here’s what is going on.
On a reasonably new computer while you are normally using it, it will idle down considerably. This draws less power. When you just have your normal windows display up, the 3D portion of your video card is probably turned off, and not drawing power. Your computer probably is drawing around 100 watts or less power while just surfing or playing around.
For example, an AMD X2 (Dual Processor) Athlon CPU draws about 30 watts of power when idling. When it ramps up to full speed it alone will draw up to 120 watts of power. This does not count the memory, support chips, the hard drives, etc.
A 7000 series Nvidia GPU can draw up to 150 watts of power when fully driven, sometimes more. Every watt of power consumed is turned into heat. Your power supply is also not 100% efficient, between 60 and 80% efficient. My PC at home when running Second Life probably draws close to 400 watts of power. This is a lot of heat for a home PC.
Most generic computers you buy off the shelf are not designed for 100% duty cycle for any extended period of time. Worse, as the high rises, electrical resistance rises, producing more heat.
This heat problem is going to manifest itself as being able to run for a while - the system is cool - and then crash after a while - it has over heated. Usually the video card over heats first. So, how do you fix this? Your number one problem is probably dust. Dust impairs the ability of the fans and heat sinks to remove heat. Open up your computer (after turning it off) and blow it out with air and clean it up good. Heat is also the number one killer of computers and hard disks. This is going to go a long way to solving problems. Get rid of the dust. If you smoke around the computer, that makes it worse.
Next, you can try to improve airflow into the computer. Do this intelligently. You want to blow cool air in and take hot air out. Usually, blow in from the front and out from the rear. You may also want to upgrade the CPU cooling unit on your computer. This can be somewhat difficult to do, depending on your computer design. You can find a lot of cooling fans and upgrades from companies like Newegg or Computergate. Buy ball bearing fans, avoid sleeve bearing fans.
Next problem might be an under powered power supply. It may be over taxed and the voltage might be sagging, causing a crash. If it looks cheap, it probably is. On most PCs, you can replace it with a bigger, unit. Newegg also sells power supplies. Look for high efficiency units. Do not buy a fan-less unit, as you are going to run it HOT. A good power supply is a good investment.
Lastly, you might look into upgrades. I’ll talk about that next post.
-Veyron
May 18th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
In addition I use a fan to cool the underside of my laptop. It may also help laptop users to remove the battery and use AC only.
May 19th, 2007 at 5:30 am
You forgot an important one: do not put your pc behind a window in full sun! (Believe me, I’ve seen people do that!)
May 19th, 2007 at 7:22 am
I had never considered putting it in the Sun… hmmmm…
Another point is putting the computer down low to the ground. Low is good as the air is cooler closer to the ground. It is bad because it will suck up more dust….
May 19th, 2007 at 9:46 am
It wasn’t too long after I discovered SL that my PC started crashing regularly. The fan on my power supply had gone out. So, I upgraded the power supply, and added more memory, and it’s been smooth sailing again ever since, and I can verify almost everything else you mentioned, as well.
Good tips, Veyron !!!
May 19th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
If you can build your own computer and choose the case and components, you’re much better off of course. I built my current computer (and the two before it). I built this one with one intake and one exhaust fan (in addition to the two that are in the power supply, and of course the cpu heatsink and fan). My video card uses a fanless “heat pipe” cooling system, but there’s a vent right next to it, and the heat is also pulled out by the exhaust fan.
One of the most important things you can do is keep the heatsinks and fans clean! I find a vacuum cleaner & brush works well, with the computer turned off of course. I also have a filter installed on the intake fan of my computer’s case to help prevent dust from entering (of course it still does, just not so much).
May 20th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Oh yeah, and Newegg is great! That’s where I order all my computer components from. =)
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:57 am
Another cause for frequent crashing can also be swapping IE lack of RAM. I coudnt believe how much RAM SL can suck if I didnt see it with my own eyes.
SL is basically a web browser and is subjected to the same kind of memory leaks. I have seen SL eat up to 1.5 gigs of RAM. The problem is when you begin eating into virtual RAM, SL starts to write live data to your harddisk (a much slower component), and instantly everything starts grinding to a halt. This is where I got 90% of my crashes.
SL feeds more data to the RAM/Virtual it is able to handle and ka-boom, here goes the neighborhood. Only one solution to this problem, get more RAM. 2 gigs recommended. I had only 512 and added 256 to do 768 and it’s already much much better. Hope it may help some people.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:53 am
I agere with CB - I had 512mb RAM when I started SL and that just wasn’t working well enough for me. I added another gig of RAM and at 1.5gb things are so much more stable.