Totally happened. I learned about Windows Setting Affinity (in the task manager>Processes>Right Click where I can determine which threads any software uses, so I set MR batch render to use 6 threads, set maya's affinity to the first six threads of my i7, and set the last two to Steam. Set Affinity will apply to any apps opened/called by the master app, so Mass Effect was auto-set to the last two cores and MayaBatch.exe was set to the first six, since it was called by Maya.

It felt kind of amazing