Is there any way to have the nvidia GPU on my laptop enter D3Cold when not in use on Linux?
Hello, my laptop is a 2020 Asus G14 which has a Ryzen 9 4900HS paired with a GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q. I am running Arch on it and its been great apart from one thing which is, the nvidia GPU refuses to power down and enter D3Cold state when not in use.
There is some nuance to this. When not using any proprietary drivers (specifically the 580xx-dkms for Turing from AUR) from the Arch Wiki, by default (nouveau drivers) the GPU can enter D3Cold just fine but I am not able to use the GPU for any meaningful task. If I want to re-encode videos using ffmpeg using nvec, it says the drivers are not installed, can't use nvidia-smi, can't run CUDA programs, its like the GPU is not there at all.
But when I install the proprietary drivers, I can use the GPU normally and there are no issues except, the GPU is now permanently in D0 state which makes the laptop run 10 degrees warmer even when doing nothing. I tried following what the Asus Linux website's guide for Arch to the T but still nothing.
I don't know how to fix this. I have attached a text file containing the outputs of relevant commands with and without the proprietary drivers installed.
Please help me how to solve this.
This is without the proprietary drivers installed:
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ nvidia-smi
bash: nvidia-smi: command not found
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power_state
D3cold
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ lspci -k | grep -A 2 -E "(VGA|3D)"
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile] (rev a1)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 17ef
Kernel driver in use: nouveau
--
03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp SanDisk Ultra 3D / WD PC SN530, IX SN530, Blue SN550 NVMe SSD (DRAM-less) (rev 01)
Subsystem: Sandisk Corp WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD
Kernel driver in use: nvme
--
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Renoir [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series] (rev c5)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 17ef
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power_state
D0
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power_state
D3cold
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ uname -r
6.19.9-arch1-1
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/*/power
cat: '/proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/*/power': No such file or directory
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$
And this is with the proprietary drivers installed by following the Asus Linux website's arch guide to the tee:
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ nvidia-smi
Sat Mar 28 00:42:37 2026
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 580.142 Driver Version: 580.142 CUDA Version: 13.0 |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 ... Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A |
| N/A 49C P8 2W / 60W | 1MiB / 6144MiB | 0% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=========================================================================================|
| No running processes found |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power_state
D0
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ lspci -k | grep -A 2 -E "(VGA|3D)"
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile] (rev a1)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 17ef
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
--
03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp SanDisk Ultra 3D / WD PC SN530, IX SN530, Blue SN550 NVMe SSD (DRAM-less) (rev 01)
Subsystem: Sandisk Corp WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD
Kernel driver in use: nvme
--
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Renoir [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series] (rev c5)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 17ef
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power_state
D0
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power_state
D0
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ uname -r
6.19.9-arch1-1
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/*/power
Runtime D3 status: Not supported
Video Memory: Active
GPU Hardware Support:
Video Memory Self Refresh: Not Supported
Video Memory Off: Supported
S0ix Power Management:
Platform Support: Not Supported
Status: Disabled
Notebook Dynamic Boost: Not Supported
[username@rog-zephyrus-g14 ~]$