MSI GS66 11UX

This article or section does not follow the
Laptop page guidelines
.
Reason:
Missing an accessibility, firmware and function key section. (Discuss in
Talk:MSI GS66 11UX
)
Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
06cb:cdad
Yes
Keyboard
1038:1122
Yes
Display
Yes
GPU (Intel)
8086:9a60
Yes
GPU (NVIDIA)
10de:249d
Yes
Webcam
5986:2127
Yes
Ethernet
10ec:3000
Yes
Bluetooth
8087:0032
Yes
Thunderbolt
8086:9a31
Yes
Audio
8086:43c8
Partial
Wi-Fi
8086:2725
Yes
MSI
has released
refreshed GS66 laptops with 11th Intel processors and NVIDIA Ampere graphics. Exact models are 11UH, 11UG and 11UE. Note that these models should not be confused with
10UX models
as they are
reported to work out of the box
with Linux.
For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see
Laptop
.
Installation
UEFI configuration
Pressing
Ins
during startup will open the UEFI.
Pressing
F11
during startup will open a boot menu.
This laptop also has
advanced UEFI settings
if desired.
Before installing Arch Linux, several steps need to be done in the UEFI:
Secure Boot
must be disabled in
Security > Secure Boot
.
VMD controller must be enabled in
Advanced > VMD controller
.
Audio
Arch Linux will not detect audio hardware unless you install
Sound Open Firmware
.
The audio device exhibits clipping issues under Linux, whereby audio may be lost at the start or end of playback. During continuous playback, the device behaves as expected.
This occurs using ALSA directly, meaning it is independent of software mixers like
PulseAudio
or
PipeWire
, and also occurs in legacy mode, using driver
options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=1
, and with power management disabled. It is unknown what is required to make the device operate optimally under Linux.
Alternatively, you can workaround this issue by constantly playing inaudible (25000hz) tone through your speakers in the background all the time:
$ sox -n -r 96000 -c 2 -t wav - synth sine 25000 | pw-play -
Graphics
When an external display is connected, especially high framerate (e.g. 240Hz) via HDMI or DisplayPort, it reports its true refresh rate, but only the cursor seems to use the reported refresh rate, while the rest stays at ~120Hz. Other issues include artifacts and glitches.
To fix this, switch to dedicated NVIDIA GPU (using Mux switch, via UEFI or via Windows) as a workaround. See also
upstream issue
.
Tips and tricks
Keyboard RGB control
Install
msi-perkeyrgb
AUR
and see the
project's README#usage
. Using the
--model gs65
argument works fine with GS66 11UX models that have an US keyboard. This has not been tested with all other keyboards, but it does not work with Spanish keyboards.
Disable fan when idle
This article or section is out of date.
Reason:
isw
AUR
is abandoned: the maintained alternative is
mcontrolcenter-bin
AUR
. (Discuss in
Talk:MSI GS66 11UX
)
Laptop fan never powers off, even when system is completely idle. This can be fixed by installing
isw
AUR
package, configuring EC register to be available with write support and issuing this command on boot:
# isw -s 0x72 0
MSI Center replacement (MControlCenter)
This device has quite some features, controllable via software, such as fan speed control, fan turbo mode, battery charge thresholds as well as power modes. All of these can be controlled via
MControlCenter
(
mcontrolcenter-bin
AUR
) application. For more information, see
Fan speed control
.
Mux switch
By default, this device operates in
Hybrid graphics
which works completely fine, but one of the key features of this device is
mux switch
. In short, it allows physically wiring NVIDIA GPU to the display, which eliminates the need for the integrated graphics processor and resulting in improved performance.
MSI only provides Windows application (
UWP
or
ZIP
) to switch between Hybrid graphics (Intel + NVIDIA) and discrete graphics (NVIDIA) mode. Basically it sets some sort of a flag (presumably in EC register) and reboots. During the reboot, it seem to temporarily boot into the UEFI, change the graphics mode and reboot back to Windows. Some reverse engineering to achieve the same functionality has been done on a similar model (see
the GitHub issue
and
the GitHub project
), but there was no success for this specific model.
While there is an option in the UEFI to change such graphics, it is greyed out. Fortunately, UEFI version
E16V4IMS.107
(
mirror
) is the most up-to-date version that does not have such option greyed out and allows to change graphics. Note that you will need to activate advanced options, allow UEFI downgrading and flash this UEFI file as a regular UEFI update.
CPU undervolting
CPU undervolting is done via
intel-undervolt
as described in
Undervolting CPU
. However, it will not work until overclocking support is enabled in the UEFI advanced settings. Once enabled, saved and rebooted, you can undervolt CPU within Linux. Note that re-connecting battery will reset overclocking support and it needs to be enabled within the UEFI again.
See also
TLP
- general power usage optimization for notebooks.