Portal Causes Excessive Server Load

[Eck]

Your Portal Version: 1.0.2
Your phpBB Type: Standard phpBB3
MODs installed: No
Your knowledge: Basic Knowledge
Boardlink: http://www.drumforum.org

PHP Version: 5.2.8
MySQL Version: 5.0.67-community

What have you done before the problem was there?
Standard phpBB3 board (3.0.4) w/ no mods using prosilver theme. Moved from a shared hosting provider to a VPS. Site runs fine with low load, ram usage.

What have you already tryed to solve the problem?
Unsintalled portal, checked that server remains stable for 48 hours. Reinstall portal from scratch and double check each edit.

Description and Message
After moving hosting providers I started with fresh files for phpBB 3.0.4 and just imported a backed up version of our database. We use prosilver and brought the forum online. It has run flawlessly until installing Board3 Portal. Within 15 minutes of installation RAM usage and swap usage maxxed out and server crashed. Rebooted and same result. I renamed portal.php to portal.php.bak and removed the links in the overall_header and overal_footer files. Now the site/server run just fine.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled several time paying close attention and double-checking all edits. I just can't seem to find where I'm causing the excessive load.

I'm happy to provide any information requested if this is something that you are willing to assist with. Thanks!!

--Adam

*EDIT: We have about 3950 users and 60-150 users online perusing the forum at any given time.

[Kevin]

Please activate the debug modus in the config.php, to see how many SQL querys are produced and how long the loading time is.
Please try to localize the block who is causing the heavy load by disabling them one by one. This would help us to see if we can change something.

A few tips for the Portal configuration, to avoid heavy load (as these blocks are causing bigger SQL queries):
- Disable the wordgraph (strongly recommended!)
- Disable the random member block
- Disable the news and announcements archive system

Last but not least: i have seen several boards with a several thousand users and a few 100.000 posts (like yours) running the Board3 Portal without any trouble. So i think this could be handled. But all in all it is recommended for bigger boards to disable some "heavy-load" blocks, to not overload the server.
Anyway: I am very interested in the reason for your problems, so we can optimize the Portal for bigger boards. Hopefully we get it working on your forum properly. Please let me know about your results - thank you!