ASUS ROG GA401I

Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
PS/2
Yes
Keyboard
PS/2
Yes
Wi-Fi
14c3:7961
Yes
Bluetooth
8087:2bbb
Yes
GPU (AMD)
1002:1638
Yes
GPU (NVIDIA)
10de:1f9d
Yes
Speakers
Yes
Fingerprint reader
27c6:521d
Untested
AniMe matrix
1
Yes
This page contains instructions and tips for configuring Arch Linux on the ASUS Zephyrus G14 and ASUS ROG Studio Pro 14, including models such as:
GA401I*
PX401I*
GA401Q*
Some models such as the GA401QH do not feature the AniMe matrix
Accessibility
BIOS
The BIOS menu is graphical and is intended to be used with a mouse. All entries however can be accessed from the keyboard, and should be easy to OCR.
The official manual states to press
F2
to enter the BIOS while the computer is booting. Neither the manual nor the POST screen not state what button opens the boot options menu, but it can be accessed by pressing
Esc
Within the BIOS menu, you can use the arrow keys (
Up
/
Down
/
Left
/
Right
), as well as
Tab
to move the cursor, the
Enter
/
Return
key to activate or save things,
F8
to open the boot device menu,
F10
to save changes,
F9
to reset BIOS settings to default,
F7
to switch BIOS modes to and from EZ mode or Advanced mode, and
Escape
to exit the BIOS without saving.
EZ mode shows the current BIOS version, your laptop's CPU, RAM, GPU, and Serial Number, display, occupied USB ports, internal storage device, CPU fan speed and CPU tempreture, current battery percentage, BIOS passwords, boot priority, and asset tag.
Advanced mode is split into many pages and is intended to be for more advanced users. You can use the left and right arrow keys to navigate between pages. The right side of the screen lists hotkeys for the menu:
Main shows your laptop's BIOS information, CPU and RAM, serial number, and current time.
Advanced allows for toggling power management, CPU virtualization, enter BIOS flashing, UEFI network stack and legacy USB support.
Boot allows you to change boot device order and whether to enable or disable Fast Boot
Security allows setting a BIOS password, toggling Secure Boot and for disabling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the fingerprint scanner.
Save & Edit allows you to quickly save or discard your BIOS changes and leave the bios, or boot off a device using the Boot Override setting.
LEDs
There is no diagnostic LED on the motherboard. The
official technical documentation
does not discuss whether the motherboard beeps when there is an issue, nor does it say what such beeps could mean.
There are three status LEDs on the center front of the bottom half of the laptop. The left LED is for power, the center LED is for the battery, and the right LED is for SSD activity. The battery LED has four states:
Solid White: The laptop is plugged in and the battery power is between 95% and 100%.
Solid Orange: The laptop is plugged in and the battery power is less than 95%.
Blinking Orange: The laptop is running on battery and the batter power is less than 10%
No light: The laptop is running on battery and the batter power is between 10% and 100%.
More information can be found in the
official technical documentation
.
Firmware
ASUS Linux
The
ASUS Linux
stack provides users of this laptop with a great many ASUS specific functions, to name a few:
Battery Charge Limit
Multiplexer (GPU) Controls
Panel Overdrive
AniMe matrix and keyboard backlight controls
Fan curve editing
Much more.
It is highly recommended to install these tools for the optimal experience on these laptops.
High battery usage/low runtime on battery
The G14 can be tweaked to have far better battery live and performance on Windows
[1]
. A few optimizations can be taken to reach a similar battery live on Arch (you can monitor your current power usage using
powertop
- note that only the reported battery discharge seems to be fully accurate).
NVIDIA driver optimization
When using the official NVIDIA driver, the power usage can be reduced by putting the following line in
/etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
:
options nvidia "NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x02"
This has also shown to reduce fan noise and overall heat.
Disabling turbo boost
While not necessarily saving power, some user prefer to disable turbo boost for smoother power delivery and less heat. To temporarily disable boost, execute the following:
# echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost
Or use the power profiles from
asusctl
to handle this automatically.
General Tips
To maximize the battery life, follow the general tips at
power management
.
Function Keys
Key
Visible?
1
Marked?
2
Effect
Function keys
Fn+F1
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMute
Fn+F2
Yes
Yes
XF86KbdsBrightnessDown
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
XF86KbdsBrightnessDown
Fn+F4
Yes
Yes
Does nothing (
XF86Launch3
in xev)
Fn+F5
Yes
Yes
Does nothing (
XF86Launch4
in xev)
Fn+F6
Yes
Yes
Opens
Screen capture
tool (
S
in xev)
Fn+F7
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F8
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+F9
Yes
Yes
Change external display options (
p
in xev)
Fn+F10
Yes
Yes
XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F11
Yes
Yes
XF86Sleep
Fn+F12
Yes
Yes
XF86RFKill
Arrow keys
Fn+R Ctrl
Yes
Yes
Opens context menu (
Menu
)
Fn+Up
Yes
Yes
Page Up
Fn+Down
Yes
Yes
Page Down
Fn+Left
Yes
Yes
Home
Fn+Right
Yes
Yes
End
Fn+Super
No
Yes
Toggles the Windows/Super key
Top keys
Volume Down
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioLowerVolume
Volume Up
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Mute
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMuteMic
ROG Logo
Yes
Yes
XF86Launch1
The key is visible to
xev
and similar tools.
The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.
Troubleshooting
Using external display through the USB-C port
While the dedicated HDMI port works out of the box, the display output through the USB-C port does not appear to be connected to the integrated graphics controller. Using an external display through this port requires to switch to the dedicated NVIDIA graphics card. See
asusctl
for more details.
Volume adjustment
When using built-in speakers, volume adjustment will not work for
PulseAudio
. Download this
patch
and apply it:
# patch -p1 -d /usr/share/alsa-card-profile/mixer/paths/ -i
/path/to/patch
Then
restart
the
pulseaudio.service
user unit.
Pacman hook
To apply the patch automatically after a
pulseaudio
upgrade, you can use a
pacman hook
:
/etc/pacman.d/hooks/pulseaudio-volume-adj.hook
[Trigger]
Type = Path
Operation = Install
Operation = Upgrade
Target = usr/share/alsa-card-profile/mixer/paths/analog-output-speaker.conf

[Action]
Description = Fixing PulseAudio volume adjustment...
When = PostTransaction
Exec = /usr/bin/patch -p1 -d /usr/share/alsa-card-profile/mixer/paths/ -i
/path/to/patch
See also
Laptop/ASUS
asusctl
https://asus-linux.org/guides/arch-guide/
Hardware Probe