Okay, I know what the problem is (99% sure). It's a bug. It happened to me when I was working on my optical illusion. Surfaces can reflect forever. That's right, if you have two mirrors, they can reflect onto each other FOREVER (I think), thereby causing Bryce to have a heart attack. This is my interpretation of what happens. I'm not positive, though. My new image under the challenge arena has two mirrors that reflect upon each other, but there is a cutoff. I tried to add an infinite plane that was reflective, but Bryce seized up just like you described (without the black monitor. I think it's a built in thing in yours that switches it off if there is no movement on screen to prevent burn-in). Okay, that about sums up what I think the problem is. I don't think any amount of ram can help this. If this is the problem, then you can press the esc key and mess around with the scene until it works, then continue render. Hope I was of some help. - Albedo