Error: Reached the maximum resources

Hey ahmedshalabyy12 ,

Thanks for the information that helps a lot. Power BI Desktop uses your local machine’s resources, and there is no fixed memory limit like in the Service.

Power BI Desktop does NOT have a hard memory cap per query instead Power BI Desktop uses as much RAM as your machine can provide and its engine can consume tens of gigabytes of memory if available. The only strict limit is the 225-second timeout, which applies when “Query Limit Simulation” is enabled. So if you do not want you can not ignore the timeout. If you don’t enable simulation, Desktop still has practical limits because the VertiPaq engine and the formula engine allocate memory in chunks and will terminate queries that exceed internal thresholds. There’s no official published “hard limit” for Desktop without simulation, but it’s generally bounded by the engine’s design, not your full RAM.

To measure and control the heaviness of your query: 

• Enable Query Limit Simulation:
  Go to File > Options > Current File > Report Settings > Query Limit Simulations.

• DAX Studio:
  DAX Studio → Connect to your PBIX → Enable Server Timings → Run the visual → Check:

  • VertiPaq scans
  • Materialization size
  • Storage Engine vs Formula Engine time
  • Memory callbacks

Best Practices to Avoid Issues

• Reduce cardinality like avoid large text columns or biggest performance killer.
• Mark date table as a date table.
• Remove unused columns.
• Use aggregations instead of detailed tables.
• Optimize DAX (avoid iterating over large tables inside CALCULATE).
• If you need to test extreme scenarios, consider breaking visuals into smaller filtered subsets.

• Use proper star schema.

• Avoid Crossjoin-like logic in DAX.

Best Regards,
Nasif Azam