Hi everyone,

Is there a way to manage the CPU usage of Houdini? Specifically, I'd like to throttle it back. I'm working on a laptop, and I can easily get to a point where I'm overheating and my fan is going crazy.

I'd like to sacrifice performance to keep my laptop below a burnout threshold. Typical things I'm doing are point wrangles, coloring and deforming points and animating it.

I've tried searching for an answer, but this is a bit of a difficult search phrase. Pardon me if there is an obvious preference somewhere.

Thanks,
Chris

If you run “houdini -j1” to launch Houdini, that tells it to use only a single thread. I don't think this is a hard limit, and some operations may still use more than one thread for a short time, but generally this will limit Houdini to using a single CPU core, which is probably enough to keep your machine from overheating. You can also use “-j1” for mantra, hbatch, etc. if you use them.

Mark

It depends on the type of cpu you use. But most likely that even if you use a single core to render with Houdini your CPU most likely will kick in the fans. Modern intel cpu's on laptops are usually capped at lower frequencies than the cpu's maximum turbo boost spec while it's using mutiple cores. But when you use a single core at 100% load that single core is usually pushed to the limit of max TDP as much as possible and that usually is around maximum turbo boost frequency. In either case the CPU gets very hot and the fans kick in. Unfortunately laptops are not really the best solution for rendering if you are concerned about the fan noise.
That being said, if there is a way to limit the frequency of the cpu cores per application on your choice of platform, that would run your laptop much cooler than using a single core to the limit.

Thanks Mark, I'll give that a try and see what effect it has.

Thanks tinyparticle. I imagine you are right and it will still cause issues for me.

Unfortunately, I travel a lot and a laptop is all I have. I am coming from Maya where I've gotten by with scripting and rigging and my computer has more than sufficed. Now in Houdini, I am often doing light work as well, but I've been going through the CGWorkshop “Vex in Houdini” and some of the pointWrangles and simulations are driving my computer crazy. I'm concerned about heat and damage more than noise. But Houdini is just too fun. I'll have to take frequent breaks or look into cooling pads.

Thanks again,
Chris