Completely turn off graphic card

[AlexanderPD]

Hi,
i'm planning to make a very low noise desktop computer, i found passive psu, very quiet fans, hd noise reducer and so on..

but i can't find a good passive video card. The few passive ones have very low performance and i may have the need of a good gpu.
So my though was "well, i can use the integrated gpu for 0 noise and turn on the discrete card for full power", so i started googling for this.

My first tought was on nvidia optimus but it was a "notebook only" tecnology. The desktop counterpart, "Nvidia Sinergy", seems to be death.
Many people in many forum says that you can use the integrated gpu as main gpu but the discrete one will not powered off, so it will be noisy.

There is a way to manually switch between gpu and igp without rebooting and totally powering off the unused gpu?

thank you!

 

[Fallengod]

There are decent graphics cards that are passive, they are just usually big. You just have to look around. There are many.

Im confused as to why youd need to power off the discrete card and switch to integrated though. If thats the case, why not just pull the discrete out if you dont want to use it?

In terms of switching without rebooting, I doubt it, but maybe. THere are some motherboards that allow you to change bios settings from windows. I dont know though as it would have to hot-switch outputs and drivers heh. Not worth the hassle if you ask me. Find a good quiet video card and dont worry about it. Youre fine with integrated, then use that....

 

[KompuKare]

I don't think this is quite here yet: in theory Lucid MVP should allow this but it's an Intel thing and really needs support from AMD / Nvidia too. AMD's 7000 series have a feature they call ZeroCore which is designed to turn off the secondary card (almost totally) in a Crossfire setup but I don't know it that feature can be made to work with Lucid MVP. That's about the best bet.

Guess this kind of things needs a fair bit of work driver-wise and since it would have to be largely vendor neutral nobody wants to pay for the development :-(

EDIT: as Fallengod said though: there are decent passive cards but they cost since they need massive amounts of metal etc. If you got one of those and had a manual switch on your case fan you could switch that one when you want use the graphic card for 3D / whatever.

 

[Vectronic]

You could probably do it with a combination of Lucid and a 3rd party app.

Setup a hotkey/shortcut to switch GPUs... and use the 3rd party app to shut down the dGPU's fan.

My 7750 is silent (well, realistically) if I drop the fan down to 20 to 25% (defaults to 39% actually the loudest fan in my case)

If you get a bit more complicated, depending on your OS/Drivers/etc... you could swap between iGPU and dGPU by disabling/enabling them (ie: script/batch that automates the "Device Manager" enable/disable).

Depending on your monitor, you might be able to use DVI for dGPU and VGA for iGPU both always connected, then you could remove the Lucid part of the equasion. (again drivers/OS/etc allowing).

 

[AlexanderPD]

Depending on your monitor, you might be able to use DVI for dGPU and VGA for iGPU both always connected, then you could remove the Lucid part of the equasion. (again drivers/OS/etc allowing).

Well, i totally forgot about this :|
i should need a double input monitor and use both vga out from my pc :\

@Fallengod: i want to do this for a 100% silent pc while in normal operation like surfing, whatching films, coding.. but a powerfull pc for cuda applications, video renders, videogames, and powerfull vga have a 40db noise in idle.
40db it's too much for my goal so i need to totally power off the unused vga!

There is a passive radeon 7750 but i prefer nvidia (i like cuda) and the only good passive nvidia vga is a 680gtx a little.. BIG (try to see it yourself: http://www.techstation.it/uploads/n...o-high-end-passiva/colorful_gtx_680_igame.jpg )

So my only choice is hot-switch the active gpu. I like the idea of manually activate by batch script, do someone has 100% security it is possible?
my actual configuration doesn't have any igp so i can't test it

thank you all for your answer!

ps: first time i heard of this lucid, i'm googling it right now!

 

[Yuriman]

Is "effectively silent" not a real substitute for zero noise? What is your ambient noise background like?

 

[AlexanderPD]

i can't measure my ambient noise, but i'm one of those psychopath who can hear the buzzing of a monitor led blinking every 2 or 3 seconds during the night

my next configuration will not be 0db but very silent, only hd and cpu fan will make noise!

 

[Yuriman]

i can't measure my ambient noise, but i'm one of those psychopath who can hear the buzzing of a monitor led blinking every 2 or 3 seconds during the night

my next configuration will not be 0db but very silent, only hd and cpu fan will make noise!

Get an SSD, and move your computer away from where you sleep, lol. I sleep with a fan at night so most computer noises are invisible to me.

In all seriousness, I aim to have more pleasant sound rather than less sound. I've always liked how the 38x120mm Panaflo fans sound, I'd describe it as a warm hum rather than a whine (like most HDDs and smaller fans have). There are quieter fans out there but the noise profile is different and I'll take an extra decibel or two if it's a less irritating noise overall.

You could also attempt to make your own "passive" VGA cooler. My X800GTO² had a tower heatsink hanging from the core with a Panaflo sitting on the case bottom next to it to cool the mosfets and other parts of the card that will melt if you don't have some kind of airflow.

Is liquid cooling an option within your budget?

 

[Fallengod]

My best advice would get a video card that has a quiet fan, or get a video card that is passive. Video card fans are not created equal. Some are loud, some are quiet.

I have a very quiet PC which was my intent. I run a MSI GTX 650 and the fan on this thing is really damn quiet at its default 40% fan speed. Im sure you can look around for third party apps that can maybe override the default low value for vga fan speed.

I watch movies in my room and my computer is literally 4 feet away from my bed. My GTX 650 @ 40% fan speed is pretty damn quiet.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Build 2 PCs.
- A surfing / work PC with a single SSD, low-end CPU, fanless PSU
- A gaming PC with an i5 and a GTX-670.

 

[purefun1965]

Buy a case designed for silence.:whiste:

 

[AlexanderPD]

thank you all for your response!
seems like to reach my goal the only way is to switch vga by disabling the unused vga via batch script, i will try it!
now i have a hd4850 (single slot) that is pretty much silent, i just can't hear it fan, it's great!
i will make my tests when i will have a new cpu with integrated video card (and i'm waiting for haswell) using my actual videocard

thank you all!