[solved] Shutdown graphics card

Labello · 2010-12-03 09:30:40

hello everyone.

my roommates and I are currently workin on some kind of fun-project. we disassembled an old laptop, ripped the wifi,cd-drive and the monitor out and nailed it on a wall. I installed Arch on it and it currently is a mpd-server for the room with our desks:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/416097/CIMG2583.jpg

the painting is not ready yet. but just to get a picture

and now the thing is that this laptop is running in headlessmode. so we do not actually need the graphics-card which is an very old nvidia one. but the heatpipes get pretty warm even though we do not even use any graphical applications.

is there any way to manually disable the graphics chip without ripping it out? i moreover think that the machine wouldn't boot anyway without any graphics-chip. like that it wouldn't produce that much heat and also would consume less power.

does anyone know how to achieve that? even though I am currently not able to provide any further information on the hardware within the device.

thanks in advance!

Last edited by Labello (2010-12-06 16:36:12)

Gusar · 2010-12-03 09:43:59

Probably not possible if the graphics chip is soldered on the mainboard. I have a laptop with an MXM nvidia card, and I can indeed take it out and the machine will still work.

Labello · 2010-12-03 14:46:23

tanks for the quick reply!

so the bios does not actually interupt the boot-process if no graphics chip is available? this sounds weird, but it might be worth a try. i haven't yet tried to remove the chip, but i will do so soon.

but i still am in favour of disabling the chip on the software side without having to break into the mainboard. thanks in advance!

Ramses de Norre · 2010-12-05 11:54:42

Looks kinda fragile without cover, a few drops of water could kill it... But very cool project!

Labello · 2010-12-06 16:35:59

thanks, but the device is in such a height that it won't be hit by any water I suppose :-)

I mark this thread as solved. I assume that the only way of really shutting down the graphics-card is to remove it from the motherboard which was as painless as it can get.

moreover we were able to remove the external energy-supply for the revamped cpu-fan from a desktop. at first we had two powersupplies which were operation independently from each other. one for the laptop and one for the fan. but now we use the energy from a usb-port to power the fan. now the fan is also switched on with the laptop and we don't need another transformer and wire which is cool but we still do not know what to really DO with it. we already have got another PC running servers for jabber, ftp, transmission, ssh, mpd and nfs... maybe a webserver

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-03 09:30:40

[solved] Shutdown graphics card

#2 2010-12-03 09:43:59

Re: [solved] Shutdown graphics card

#3 2010-12-03 14:46:23

Re: [solved] Shutdown graphics card

#4 2010-12-05 11:54:42

Re: [solved] Shutdown graphics card

#5 2010-12-06 16:35:59

Re: [solved] Shutdown graphics card

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