MSI GS66 11UX
Hardware | PCI/USB ID | Working? |
---|---|---|
Touchpad | Yes | |
Keyboard | Yes | |
Display | Partial | |
GPU (Intel) | Yes | |
GPU (Nvidia) | Yes | |
Webcam | Yes | |
Ethernet | Yes | |
Bluetooth | Unknown | |
Thunderbolt | Unknown | |
Audio | Yes | |
Wireless | 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.
Preparation
Useful shortcuts:
- Pressing
INSERT
during startup will open BIOS. - Pressing
F11
during startup will open boot menu. - Pressing
LEFT ALT + RIGHT CTRL + RIGHT SHIFT + F2
while in BIOS will show advanced settings.
Installation
Before installing Arch Linux, several steps need to be done in BIOS:
- Secure Boot must be disabled in BIOS->Security->Secure Boot.
-
VMD controller
must be enabled in BIOS->Advanced, otherwise Linux will not detect internal NVME SSD.
During Arch Linux installation, the following steps needs to be taken to ensure working system:
- Add
vmd
toMODULES
list in/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
, otherwise Linux would not be able to detect internal NVME SSD during the boot. - Install sof-firmware, otherwise no input or output audio devices would be detected.
Tips & Tricks
Keyboard RGB control
See msi-perkeyrgbAUR. Use gs65
model which works fine with GS66 11UX models.
Known issues
Locked 60Hz refresh rate
Laptops with refresh rates higher than 60Hz could not be set above 60Hz on integrated displays. Changing to higher resolution has not effect and display is still locked to 60Hz. See bug report.
Some success has been achieved:
- Use Nvidia GPU as primary GPU (source).
- Edit integrated display's EDID information and override timings of preferred mode (source).
- Ubuntu live image with safe graphics mode shows more than 60Hz.
Graphics mode switch (mux switch)
MSI only provides Windows-only application to switch between Hybrid graphics (Intel + Nvidia) and discrete graphics (Nvidia) mode. Basically it sets some sort of a flag (assumably in EC register) and performs reboot. During the reboot, it seem to temporarily boot into BIOS, change the graphics mode and reboot back to Windows.
There is no method to change graphics (using mux switch) using Linux and such switch option is greyed out in BIOS. Some reverse engineering has been done (see here and here), but there was no success for this specific model.