How can I set the GPU Slowdown Temperature on an NVIDIA GPU (specifically, a GTX960M)?
I'm running Kali 2.0, a Debian-based penetration testing distro. As you might be able to tell from the GPU model, I'm on a laptop (an MSI Apache gaming laptop), which in turn means I'm using bumblebee to handle running GPU applications. I'm getting into neural network architectures in Torch, and those get pretty GPU-intensive and run for very long periods of time, such that I'd like to be able to set it running and then walk away for a day or two. I don't want to risk damaging the graphics card or any other components, and the default setting of 96 C before slowing down the GPU is a bit high for my tastes - I'd like to lower it to 90 C, if possible.
nvidia-smi will cheerfully tell me the current setting, but doesn't offer a way to change the setting. nvidia-settings pulls up what might be a helpful menu, but it also warns me that I'm not actually using the NVIDIA X Driver (though experimentation demonstrates that I can, in fact, use the card for computation), which makes me skeptical that it'd do anything for me even if it does have an option buried somewhere. I haven't been able to figure out how to set rules for it, yet, either. Finally, I've seen some Windows software for editing the card's BIOS - this strikes me as tremendous overkill and fairly dangerous. If it's the only way, I'll look into it, but I'm hoping for some expert opinion before I try to do that. If I understand how these things work, that will persist when I reboot into Linux, anyway.
Dr. Google is unhelpful, because all of the results focus on commands for merely showing the temperature, making changes through Windows programs, or the options mentioned above.
Do I have any options I haven't explored? Absolute worst case, I can just go buy a bunch of cold packs and set the laptop atop them when I run these things but that seems like a terrible kludge, between the sharp temperature gradient that'll create and the risk of condensation getting inside the machine or something. Feels like it risks hardware damage without a guarantee of doing what it's supposed to. The story comes to mind of the man with his feet in an oven and his head in a freezer who, when asked how he felt, answered "On the average, pretty good!"
