[Help] GPU Power Management Issue on Hyprland

[RajDave-Dev]

Hi,

I was previously using GNOME Desktop and then switched to KDE for some reasons, and now I am on Hyprland. In both GNOME and KDE, which were running in Wayland mode, my NVIDIA GPU was not being used.

My System Specs

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 (HX)
• Primary GPU: AMD Radeon 980
• Secondary GPU: NVIDIA RTX 6000 (very power-hungry)

Because the RTX 6000 consumes a lot of power, I disabled it using udev and modprobe. Everything worked as expected in GNOME and KDE, they used the primary GPU (Radeon).

However, after switching to Hyprland, even after setting card1 (Radeon) in the hyprland.conf file, the NVIDIA GPU still becomes active and consumes power.

Observations

• In TTY mode, the NVIDIA GPU is not active.
• When I start Hyprland, the GPU gets activated (sometimes flickering) and starts consuming power.
• Exiting Hyprland back to TTY does not put the GPU to sleep.

Context

I use multiple operating systems:

• Windows: Games, video editing, etc.
• Kali Linux: AI model development and other GPU-intensive tasks.
• Arch Linux: Lightweight or non-GPU-constrained usage.

What I Have Tried

• Disabling the GPU using nvidia-smi.
• Using udev rules and modprobe configuration to disable or hide the GPU from other processes.
• Setting and exporting the AQ_... environment variable in hyprland.conf.
• Using both GitHub-built and Arch Linux-built versions of Hyprland.

Results

None of the above solutions worked.

Setup

• Using Caelestia Dots.
• I also raised the same ticket on Caelestia Dots here.

[MGross21]

The AQ_DRM_DEVICES is what the Hyprland Wiki says to use, but if that isn't working, you can try blacklisting the drivers altogether.

/etc/modprobe.d/disable-nvidia.conf:
_{not sure what drivers you are using}

blacklist nvidia
blacklist nvidia_drm
blacklist nvidia_modeset
blacklist nouveau

---

Another approach can be to unbind the GPU device:
Unbind:

echo 0000:01:00.0 | sudo tee /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/driver/unbind

(re) bind:

echo 0000:01:00.0 | sudo tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/nvidia/bind

Double check NVIDIA PCI address with lspci -Dnnd 10de:

[RajDave-Dev]

I tried echo 0000:01:00.0 | sudo tee /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/driver/unbind but my system doesn't have driver folder in that.

System Info:
Arch Linux
Using Proprietary Nvidia Drivers.
MSI motherboard

Also Disabled the card via nvidia-smi persistence mode to false and set the card to drain.
But still it shows the card active maybe the drain is the problem. But the hyprland is not using the nvidia card anymore (via nvidia-smi) and my gpu led indicator is stable (not flickering) so it can be that my card is not being pinged.

[MGross21]

If nvidia-smi drain .... isn't working, maybe GRUB parameters can be added, but that is likely not necessary. Found some sources 1, 2 that may help lead you down a better rabbit hole.

[RajDave-Dev]

well these things i have tried.

I had nvidia drivers blacklisted, even nouveau, removed the card by udev rules (vga and audio ones, because these two are only available), but still my card is being ping so I removed blacklist and udev, and used nvidia-smi to disable Persistent mode and set the card to drain, Although my card is active but drawing less power compared to previous approaches. Also I've tried Blacklist the pci-e slot in grub loader, and telling acpi to not load the card and the Linux isn't booting anymore (fixed it via live boot image and chrooting into the OS partition) so I came to the conclusion that let it be I'll use the nvidia drainage and persistent mode method. Now my pc is drawing 4-6 watts instead of 90-113.7 watts.

[MGross21]

Linux isn't booting anymore (fixed it via live boot image and chrooting into the OS partition)

UH OH that isn't good 😰. At least you have it running more as a standby mode. Bear in mind that there are multiple PCI addresses connected to the graphics card. While .0 is the main graphics address, other things are operating, such as audio controllers, which are likely still pulling the residual watts.

For me, I have a NVIDIA Graphics laptop with the following suffix addresses:
.0: VGA Compatible Controller (Video)
.1: Audio Device
.2: USB Controller
.3: Serial Bus controller

edit: just grabbed from my laptop

0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile] [10de:2191] (rev a1)
0000:01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation TU116 High Definition Audio Controller [10de:1aeb] (rev a1)
0000:01:00.2 USB controller [0c03]: NVIDIA Corporation TU116 USB 3.1 Host Controller [10de:1aec] (rev a1)
0000:01:00.3 Serial bus controller [0c80]: NVIDIA Corporation TU116 USB Type-C UCSI Controller [10de:1aed] (rev a1)