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I recently got a HP Z420 8-core desktop PC with 32GB RAM, and set it up as a headless Ubuntu 18.04 server. The mainboard has no on-board graphic card. So I'm forced to install a video card, lspci | grep VGA gives: 05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [NVS 300] (rev a2).

I wonder if it possible to turn off the graphic card completely to avoid the constant heat generated by the graphic board, which is not used.

I tried blacklist nvidia and nouveau. But that doesn't seem to change anything.

Can anyone please share some insight as how to disable the graphic card?

Ben Z.
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1 Answers1

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Having the graphics adapter output just the KVM accessible terminal login is going to produce very little to no heat at all. Assuming there's no GPU/cuda usage, which seems likely in this case.

Making sure there's no X server running is about as far as you can or want to take it as not having any way to physically access the machine is a bad idea from a troubleshooting and maintenance point of view. If there is a network failure, or an update cycle goes horribly wrong, you need a way to access the machine.

SHawarden
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  • thanks much. what you said makes sense. However the GPU card does feel hot, even no GUI desktop is running. – Ben Z. Jun 18 '20 at 14:14