### System details

ASUS ROG Strix G16 (G614FM), Ryzen 9 9955HX, RTX 5060 Laptop GPU, Omarchy 4.x Quattro, nvidia-open-dkms 610.57.04

### What's wrong?

On Omarchy the GPU is hard-capped at **50W** under any load. On CachyOS, on the same hardware with the same driver version, it sustains **85–93W**. The 50W figure is exactly the card's **Default Power Limit** — base TGP with no Dynamic Boost.

Setup: MUX in dGPU-only mode (`supergfxctl -m AsusMuxDgpu`), external 1080p@165Hz display on the NVIDIA card.

On Omarchy, `nvidia-smi` showed:

    Pwr:Usage/Cap   49W / 50W

On CachyOS (same driver, same MUX setting, no manual tuning):

    Pwr:Usage/Cap    4W / 100W

    GPU Ceiling Power Limit
        Current Power Limit   : 100.00 W
        Default Power Limit   :  50.00 W
        Max Power Limit       : 115.00 W

Under load on CachyOS: 85–93W sustained at 78–80°C, peaking ~94W. On Omarchy the card never exceeded ~50W at 63–66°C, and Cities: Skylines II was unplayable — sluggish menus, `SuspendThread loop failed` on exit.

## Cause

Dynamic Boost on NVIDIA laptops is not automatic on Linux. The GPU stays at its default TGP unless the userspace daemon **`nvidia-powerd`** is running to raise the ceiling.

Arch's `nvidia-utils` ships `nvidia-powerd.service` with **preset: disabled**. Something has to enable it explicitly. On CachyOS the installer does:

    ● nvidia-powerd.service - nvidia-powerd service
         Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nvidia-powerd.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
         Active: active (running)

Omarchy's `install/config/hardware/nvidia.sh` installs the driver, configures early KMS, and sets Hyprland environment variables, but never enables the service. The relevant section:

    omarchy-pkg-add "$KERNEL_HEADERS" "${PACKAGES[@]}"

    # Configure modprobe for early KMS
    sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf <<EOF >/dev/null
    options nvidia_drm modeset=1
    EOF

There's no `systemctl enable nvidia-powerd` anywhere in the script, and nothing elsewhere in the install appears to do it.

Desktop GPUs don't use Dynamic Boost, so desktop users never see this. It only shows on laptops, where it looks like a hardware or driver fault rather than a missing service.

## What I ruled out before finding this

All of these left the 50W cap unchanged on Omarchy:

- Driver — `nvidia-open-dkms` is correct for Blackwell
- MUX mode — switched Hybrid → dGPU-only; desktop improved, cap unchanged
- `asusd` and `power-profiles-daemon` — masked from boot, cap unchanged
- Kernel — installed `linux-cachyos` on top of Omarchy, cap unchanged
- `asus_armoury` — reports `No matching power limits found for this system` and all `nv_*` attributes as unavailable. **A red herring:** the same message appears on CachyOS, where the card draws 90W regardless.
- Wine prefix, Proton version, game mods, drive mappings

## One gap

I didn't run `systemctl status nvidia-powerd` on Omarchy before wiping it, so I can't paste the service state from the failing system. But the cap matches the card's Default Power Limit to the watt, `nvidia-powerd` is the documented mechanism that raises it, the unit is disabled by preset in Arch packaging, and the install script doesn't enable it.

Discussion #4726 reports the same symptom on Acer Nitro/Predator laptops and mentions enabling `nvidia-powerd` as part of that fix. This looks like the general case.

## Suggested fix

In `install/config/hardware/nvidia.sh`, after the `omarchy-pkg-add` line:

    sudo systemctl enable nvidia-powerd

On a desktop card `nvidia-powerd` finds nothing to manage and exits harmlessly, so it doesn't need gating on laptop detection.

Happy to test a patch on this hardware, though it'd mean reinstalling Omarchy.