Disable ultrabay GPU

The UPS man brought me my y500 today. Congratulated me on another surviving another customs avoidance. Harhar.

Is there a way to completely disable the ultrabay GPU? I had a M1730 with 8700M's in SLI in the past and disabling one of them through device manager would cut the power allocation to the second GPU. But when I try the same on the 750M, the fan keeps spinning. Just one 750M is enough for the little games I play.

I guess I could just remove the ultrabay GPU, but it feels underwhelming having to put effort into something I was able to do just fine in the past.

 

Disable SLI in the nVidia Control Panel. You can't really game on one card unplugged, is there a reason to bother disabling both?

 

This is meaningless.. just let them both be on...

 

not if you're cutting back power usage. i also disable the 2nd gpu when playing less demanding games like dota 2, fallout nv, or torchlight 2. having a gaming laptop already adds a considerable amount to my electricity bill. so i disable 2nd gpu and also disable oc if i can.:thumbsup:

 

SLI setups are overkill for almost everything on the market. Unless you absolutely need to see all that fancy post processing stuff there's really no need for both being active at once.

Not to mention when you're paying for electricity, the running costs add up.

I tried disabling through the cp but I can still see the powerbay fan spinning. Additionally, hwinfo still shows a core temperature for the 2nd GPU, so it's definitely still being allocated power.

I guess I'll just pull it out when I don't need it.

 

Disabling SLI does't really shut down the Ultrabay GPU. I like the fan running though, it helps in keeping the chassis a bit colder. It depends on what kind of games you played. Even at 1250 MHz core freq on both GPU, I am still not able to max out all the latest games. I want my eye candy

 

You need to remove the Ultrabay completely. If the Ultrabay GPU is physically plugged in, then it will still be drawing some amount of power.

Even in your old M1730, your 2nd GPU still was drawing power. Disabling something through Device Manager tells your machine not to use that device through the OS. It does not actually configure your laptop to cut all power to that device. The only way to completely turn off power to a computer component is to actually physically disconnect it from the machine.

BTW. This only makes sense to do if you're running on battery power. If you're using your laptop plugged in to a wall, just configure the system to disable SLI (through nVidia Control Panel), and the 2nd GPU will remain in a low-power idle state. You will not actually be saving very much on your electricity bill between low-power idle vs completely disconnected.

 

Even if it was on full power how much money possibly could be saved per month? A dollar? Maybe two? I just don't see the reason of going out of the way to save $1/2 a month..

 

Agree, plus why did you get the sli in the first place if you disable it most of the time with a 170w charger plugged in...

 

Dota 2 is pretty demanding...

 

nope. i can max it out @ 1080p with only one 650m.

as long as i can max out a game @ 45fps up using only one gpu then that's the time i disable the 2nd one.