MSI GE75 Raider 8SX

Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
Minor Issues
Keyboard
1038:1122
Yes
GPU (Intel)
8086:3e9b
Yes
RTX 2080
Untested
RTX 2070
Untested
RTX 2060
10de:1f11
Yes
Webcam
5986:211c
Yes
Ethernet
1969:e0b1
Yes
Bluetooth
8087:0aaa
Yes
SD-card reader
0bda:0129
Untested
Audio
8086:a348
Needs Configuration
Wi-Fi
8086:a370
Yes
TPM
Untested
MSI GE75 Raider 8SX
refers to the following laptop models:
MSI GE75 Raider 8SG
MSI GE75 Raider 8SF
MSI GE75 Raider 8SE
The only apparent difference between the models is the dedicated Nvidia GPU.
CPU
Like with many laptop models, these models seem to be designed to run your CPU at a steamy 90+°C when under load. The thermals are already better than on Windows out of the gate on Arch Linux, thermals (and therefore performance) can and should be further improved by undervolting via the
intel-undervolt
utility, you do this at your own risk.
Note
It is recommended to experiment with values between -100mv and -150mv on this model, the sweet spot is usually somewhere in that range.
Disabling CPU vulnerability mitigations
can also improve performance significantly for this machine, like with undervolting you do this at your own risk.
Video
Integrated graphics
The iGPU works without problems, has
Intel GVT-g
support too.
8SG (Nvidia RTX 2080)
Untested (Should work fine on proprietary nvidia driver)
8SF (Nvidia RTX 2070)
Untested (Should work fine on proprietary nvidia driver)
8SE (Nvidia RTX 2060)
Although the dedicated graphics seem to be working perfectly with
PRIME
, there are a few odd issues that might occur on the 8SE.
Performance issues of various kinds when the display refresh rate is misconfigured (correct refresh rate is 144hz)
Hard system (GPU Driver Crash?) freeze when running some games with VSync disabled (Tested in Subnautica and No Man's Sky) and in some games for unknown reasons (War Thunder); It also happens when recording long videos with ffmpeg using nvenc (5 min+). This issue can be solved by not using PRIME offloading (e.g. use the dGPU as your main graphics card for X, for instance through
optimus-manager-git
AUR
)
*RESOLVED* When using
mpv
with its vulkan renderer, you may experience major issues when resizing the window. Setting
vulkan-queue-count=1
and
swapchain-depth=1
fixes the issue.
See git issue for mpv
.
Prime-sync seems not to work when following
common instructions
to enable it/check if it is enabled, although functionally the card is fine when used with prime, when using the dgpu to run x (with nvidia-xurn or optimus manager) instead of the iGPU, there will be a very high amount of tearing.
The crashing and mpv issues could be regressions, most likely in the nvidia drivers, they were not present in early 2019.
It is uncertain if these issues are bound to the model or if they are faults in the specific device tested on. Overall, all issues are something that is easy to workaround (ensure refresh rate is correctly configured for the display in X, make sure to keep vsync on in video games, use the suggested settings for mpv and use prime normally when you want to use the GPU).
Audio
This series has some audio issues on Linux.
Known issues
Sound from headphones is tied to the volume of the speaker channel which gets muted whenever headphones are plugged in. Headphones will be almost entirely muted. Run
amixer -c 0 set Speaker 100
to temporarily fix. The issue can be resolved with the driver options mentioned below.
Laptop Speakers sound pretty bad by default, can be resolved with driver options below.
Crackling/popping noises/artifacts in audio occur frequently at start & end of audio streams, barely noticable in speakers but very noticable in headphones. No known solution, although increasing buffer size can sometimes reduce it.c
Crackling in Pipewire (besides just at start & end of streams), solutions in the relevant section below.
Driver options
There are two driver options that are known to positively impact this model.
The below setting improves the sound from the laptop speakers (presumably by enabling the LFEs), and the issue with headphones being muted when plugged in.
/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
options snd_hda_intel model=lenovo-y530
The below setting fixes the muted headphones on plugin but does not affect the laptop speakers.
/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
options snd_hda_intel model=clevo-p950
PulseAudio
Default settings are fine, so long as one of the above driver options is used.
Note
No setting to eliminate crackling at the start & end of audio streams has been found. If you are having crackling problems try setting environment variable
PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC
to 40, 60 or 80.
PipeWire
Note
If config files do not exist you have to copy them from
/usr/share/pipewire/
Some applications may cause crackling if not allowed to run sound at their preferred sample rate, this issue can be solved by setting:
/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf
default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 ]    # See reason it is not default:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/Config-PipeWire#setting-global-sample-rate
A lot of crackling issues can also be solved by increasing the audio buffer size/adding latency.
Increase the buffer size to 1024 and reduce the
ALSA
period size:
/etc/pipewire/media-session.d/alsa-monitor.conf
api.alsa.period-size   = 128  # See:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/Config-ALSA#alsa-buffer-properties
api.alsa.headroom      = 1024
Alternatively, if you prefer not to set a global buffer size, you can instead configure pipewire-pulse applications to have a larger buffer:
/etc/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf
pulse.min.req = 1024/48000              # Requests minimum latency at 21ms, avoid setting this any higher.
#or
pulse.min.quantum      = 1024/48000     # Forces minimum latency to 21ms, you should avoid using this setting.
To set latency on a per application basis use environment variables
PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC
(pipewire-pulse) or
PIPEWIRE_LATENCY
(everything else):
PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=X    # Replace X with a number (integer)
PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=1024/48000 # 21ms, does not work for pipewire-pulse!
When using
PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC
environment variable, always check in
pw-top
and see the QUANT and RATE values, actual latency is QUANT/RATE=LATENCY (in seconds).
It is recommended to either target a quantum of 1024 or 2048 when trying to fix crackling (when 1024 quantum is not enough to prevent crackling, 2048 often is).
No setting to eliminate crackling at the start & end of audio streams has been found, but setting quantum to 2048 for the problematic applications often helps.
TouchPad
Has some
scrolling & palm detection issues
, but otherwise works fine. It is recommended to disable tap-to-click functionality due to the palm detect issues.
Refer to below keyboard section if you want to be able to use the toggle touchpad button (
FN+F3
).
Gestures not tested.
Keyboard
RGB Backlighting
RGB Backlighting can be configured via the
msi-perkeyrgb
AUR
utility. If a lighting profile has been configured on Windows prior to booting Linux, the keyboard will remember it.
Function keys
This article or section does not follow the
Laptop page guidelines
.
Reason:
Does not honor
Help:Laptop page guidelines#"Function keys" section
, some function keys have not been captured properly (e.g "airplane mode", turbo mode) (Discuss in
Talk:MSI GE75 Raider 8SX
)
Key
Detected
Labeled
Working
Effect
Fn+NumPad-
No
Yes
Yes
Keyboard Backlighting Increase
Fn+NumPad+
No
Yes
Yes
Keyboard Backlighting Decrease
Fn+NumPad0
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMute
Fn+Left
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+Right
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+Up
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+Down
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F2
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86Display
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F4
Yes
Yes
Partially
P1 (Turbo Mode)
Fn+F5
Yes
Yes
Partially
Eco Mode/
XF86Battery
Fn+F6
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86WebCam
Fn+F7
No
Yes
No
Transmission (Gaming Mode)
Fn+F8
Yes
No
Yes
XF86WLAN
Fn+F9
Yes
No
Yes
XF86Bluetooth
Fn+F10
Yes
Yes
Yes
Airplane Mode
Fn+F12
Yes
Yes
Yes
XF86Sleep
Fn+PageUp
Yes
Yes
Yes
Home
Fn+PageDown
Yes
Yes
Yes
End
The Airplane Mode, WLan and Bluetooth buttons will only work if you, add
acpi_osi=! acpi_osi="Windows 2009"
to your
kernel parameters
.
The
Fn+F3
,
Fn+F4
and
Fn+F5
keys all get detected with keysyms, but they are all either unassigned or wrongly assigned. To make these keys usable, you need to add this to your
~/.Xmodmap
:
keycode  93 = XF86TouchpadToggle NoSymbol XF86TouchpadToggle
keycode 120 = XF86Tools NoSymbol XF86Tools
keycode 126 = XF86Battery NoSymbol XF86Battery
Understandably, the Turbo and Eco mode buttons do not do anything on Linux since we do not have the Dragon Center software required for those buttons to do anything. You can however now use
sxhkd
,
xbindkeys
or your
window manager
to bind those keys to whatever custom function you want.
There is a remaining issue however where when
Fn+F3
is pressed,
Meta+Ctrl
are also pressed, this issue is also present on Windows (probably a hardware flaw). This issue sometimes seems to interfere with the buttons functionality. For instance default keybinds for
XF86TouchpadToggle
will not work due to the forced modifiers. Even if you do change the keybind in your DE by going to the appropriate shortcut and hitting
Fn+F3
to register it, it is not actually guaranteed to work (in KDE for instance you may get a popup that says the touchpad is on/off, but the touchpad is never actually toggled)
In the end to be able to toggle your touchpad you may need to bind it to a
custom script
.