MSI Vector A18 HX A9WX

Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
04F3:31FD
Yes
Keyboard
0db0:0db0
Yes
GPU (AMD)
1002:13c0
Yes
GPU (NVIDIA)
Untested
10de:2c19
Yes
Webcam
5986:1193
Yes
Ethernet
10ec:8125
Yes
Wi-Fi
14c3:7925
Yes
Bluetooth
Yes
Speakers
1022:15e3
Yes
Microphone
No
TPM 2.0
Yes
MSI Vector A18 HX A9WX
refers to the following laptop models:
MSI Vector A18 HX A9WIG
MSI Vector A18 HX A9WHG
The only apparent difference between the models is the dedicated NVIDIA GPU (RTX 5080 Max-Q or RTX 5070-Ti Max-Q) and the  varied display options that both models have.
The
MSI Raider A18 HX A9WX
models are nearly identical to the Vector A9WX, the only difference being more RGB Leds on the Raiders and there being an RTX 5090 model among the Raiders.
These laptops seem to work extremely well out of the box with the biggest issue being lack of support for interacting with the mux switch and rgb keyboard lighting from linux.
Audio
Speakers work perfectly out of the box.
If the speakers mysteriously stop working on the laptop and will not work even on other operating systems, a BIOS update may resolve the issue. This problem can happen after a hard shutdown (holding the power button), thus using
SysRq keyboard shortcuts
for hard shutdowns instead should help avoid this situation.
Microphone is not detected. It was not detected on windows 10 either, so it's possible that laptop does not have a mic or the testing was done on a defective model (since the soundcard works the microphone should work too)
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Occasionally after a reboot, Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi will malfunction. This can be fixed with a cold boot.
Touchpad
It works, gestures and palm detection have not been tested.
Function keys
Key
Detected
Labeled
Effect
Fn+F1
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMute
Fn+F2
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+F4
Ctrl+Super+NoSymbol
Yes
XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F5
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMicMute
Fn+F6
e057
Yes
XF86Bluetooth
Fn+F7
Yes
Yes
XF86Tools
Fn+F8
Hardware
Yes
Keyboard Brightness
Fn+F9
No
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F10
No
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+F11
Yes
Yes
Super_R + P
(Screen switch)
Fn+PgUp
Yes
Yes
Home
Fn+PgDn
Yes
Yes
End
Fn+PrtScr
Yes
No
Super_L + Shift_L + S
Fn+Delete
Yes
No
Insert
Fn+Up
Hardware
Yes
Fan Mode
Fn+Left
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioPlay
Fn+Down
e073
Yes
Crosshair
Fn+Right
e026
Yes
XF86DisplayOff
Fn+B
Yes
No
XF86Pause
Fn+P
Yes
No
XF86Pause
Fn+L
Yes
No
Scroll Lock
Fn+Esc
Hardware
Yes
Fn-Lock(Hardware)
Fn+Esc
e075
Yes
Unknown
Fn+A
e00d
No
Unknown
Note
The Display Off key only triggers when both the Fn button and the key itself have been released. I believe it is intended to be used with
DPMS
screen blanking, as this behavior would prevent the key release from unintentionally powering the screen on again.
Binding unbound keys
When pressing a key that is not bound properly (like the bluetooth key) dmesg will output a message like the following:
atkbd serio0: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xf3 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd serio0: Use 'setkeycodes e057 <keycode>' to make it known.
See
Map scancodes to keycodes#Using setkeycodes
.
Sometime between the original writing of this page and now, a regression seems to have broken the TouchpadToggle button on this model.
showkey --scancodes
gives us
0x1d 0xe0 0x5b 0x6f 0x9d 0xe0 0xdb 0xef
with
0x6f 0xef
being an unmapped (NoSymbol) key instead of
XF86TouchpadToggle
which it used to be before.
The simplest solution to this problem is to just bind this key combination to your touchpad toggling method. If you need the keycode for it you can use
wev
or
xev
to obtain it (in your environment it will likely
not
be the same as the one given by showkey which is 194).
RGB Backlighting
Besides the keyboard lighting button, there is currently no way to control the RGB lighting. If you change the RGB lighting from Windows, the changes will stay even after rebooting into linux.
There is a gitlab issue for openrgb
here
.