Starlight Precise 2.5 working perfectly after a week of repairs / tweaks

Topaz Video General
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Greetings fellow renderers,

I’m using Version 1.6 with Starlight Precise 2.5 and it is working without any issues at all after about ten renders. The one that is running now is 7.5 hours long with 1 more hour to go. 100% success so far. I’m 3X upscaling 720X480 ProRes 422 files to 2160 X 1440 resolution.

A quick rundown of my week of upgrades, noob mistakes, a virus and system tweaks incase this helps anyone

Updated my CPU from a stone age model to a bronze age model - system overheated

  • installed a larger stock CPU cooler - system overheated
  • installed a new Scythe Fuma 3 air cooler - system overheated
  • removed the protective plastic from the Fuma 3 cooler ( a common mistake) - system good

Installed 3 extra 120 mm Arctic Pro fans that are externally powered by a 12V 2.5 A power supply that has a switch with and two fan power leads. Added a Noctua NA FC1 fan controller which plugs into the power supply and controls the fan speeds with a dial. With more fans they don’t have to run as fast and I have dialed in the speed that keeps the CPU at about a 74 C average temperature with the highest spike to 90.5 C, which is very safe. If you get the Noctua NA FC1 it detaches from the power supply too easily. I used small wire ties to secure the connection.

Next my keyboard got totally erratic so I plugged in another one and it had the same problem. Then Windows Defender alerted me that it had isolated a virus that had attached itself to Open Hardware Monitor named the WinNT/ Winring0 virus. Cleaned and rebooted and back to normal. Now I’m using HWiNFO with just the CPU sensor status enabled.

Then my computer completely lost power. My power supply was about 18 years old and the parts dry out and start to fail apparently. Installed a new 850 Watt power supply and my system ran noticeably better and the CPU temps dropped a bit.

Then Topaz Starlight shut down during a render.
I read “Reports around Starlight Precise 2.5 indicate a neuroserver memory leak / out‑of‑memory behavior, especially with certain containers (MKV) and when using trims. Users have seen it eat essentially all system RAM (e.g., 64 GB) before failing, causing crashes or stalls,” I’m not sure if this information is accurate or not.

My error code
Name: System Source: nvlddmkm “That nvlddmkm Event ID 153 means the NVIDIA driver/GPU crashed”

I was advised “Use DDU in Safe Mode to remove all NVIDIA drivers, then install the latest NVIDIA Studio driver directly from NVIDIA’s site.” I downloaded and installed DDU and booted into safe mode. DDU was on my screen in safe mode and I ran it to clean out the old drivers and after boot immediately installed new STUDIO drivers using “Custom Install” Clean Install and unchecked the audio option.

Next I went into the BIOS and changed my GPU’s PCI slot option from automatic to Gen 4. I had previously set my CPU power to Eco mode at 95 watts to back off on the power a little.

I reboot Topaz Video each time and reboot my computer regularly, both of which may be unnecessary but it’s working. I’d rather restart and reboot rather than lose a long render.

MSI Ventus 3 GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT, MSI B550 PRO-VDH mobo, 32 Gb 3200 RAM

Good luck everyone! Dave Jeffery

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Thanks for posting that very detailed account. I found it very educating. I’m a Mac guy who recently took a windows plunge and got my first pc - a Lenovo legion with an RTX 5090 card so everything related is new to me. There seems to be so many variables and settings I am completely unaware of so I appreciate hearing about challenges related to GFX cards and software that others have come across and fixed on their systems. It helps me get a fuller understanding of the somewhat complicated windows nvidia topaz world.

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That’s a nice PC built experience diary :slight_smile:

Tip for anyone who still has some space left in their case. I’m a big fan now slot fans, which tend to occupy a niche role in the PC-building world—unjustly so.

front-to-back airflow is impaired by top and bottom fans/airflow, this is not ideal. That’s why top-mounted fans often provide only limited benefits, and even a push-pull setup at the top is hardly any better.

In almost every case, more air is being pushed in through the front than is being exhausted out the back of the PC—that’s the real issue. Slot fans help solve this by pulling more air full trough the case and extracting GPU’s hot air directly, which also means the CPU ends up drawing in cooler air.

Slot Rear Exhaust Cooling Fan
Slot Rear Exhaust Cooling Fan543×211 11.3 KB

For quiet operation, I’d recommend running these fans at 7V instead of 12V, by changing the pins or use a fan controller…sure you can install more than one of them.

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Oh no! I’m so glad you figured that one out.

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The old AMD CPUs would get instantly grilled if you forgot to remove the protective film from the cooler. Those were the days :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I use one of those in my file server to keep air flowing around the Adaptec 16 channel RAID controller. The RAID chip gets ridiculously hot (85 degrees centigrade is considered “normal”) without the exhaust fan.

In my Topaz machine I have a dual chamber case, so the PSU is on one side and the motherboard on the other. So I use three intake fans on the bottom, another three intake on the side, three exhaust fans on the top blowing through the CPU radiator, and one exhaust on the back. I track ambient temperature inside the case (all the fans are indexed to this sensor except for the radiator fans which index off of the CPU coolant temp) and it never goes over 28 C in there. CPU and GPU temps hover around 60 C under load.