MSI GS66 11UX

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.

Hardware	PCI/USB ID	Working?
Touchpad	`06cb:cdad`	Yes
Keyboard	`1038:1122`	Yes
Display		Yes
GPU (Intel)	`8086:9a60`	Yes
GPU (NVIDIA)	`10de:249d`	No
Webcam	`5986:2127`	Yes
Ethernet	`10ec:3000`	Yes
Bluetooth	`8087:0032`	Yes
Thunderbolt		Yes
Audio
Wireless		Yes

For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see Laptop.

Preparation

Useful shortcuts:

Pressing INSERT during startup will open BIOS.
Pressing 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.

During Arch Linux installation, the following steps needs to be taken to ensure working system:

Follow Advanced Linux Sound Architecture#ALSA firmware, otherwise no input or output audio devices will be detected.

Tips and tricks

Keyboard RGB control

Install and see the project's README#usage. Using the argument works fine with GS66 11UX models that have an English keyboard. This has not been tested with all other keyboards, but it does not work with Spanish keyboards.

Known issues

Nvidia driver does not work

Laptop fails to boot with Nvidia driver installed (using ). It also fails to build when using DKMS.

The issue is unclear at the moment, but it seems a very similar issue is reported to Nvidia here.

Locked 60Hz refresh rate

Sometimes laptops with high resolutions and refresh rates are unable to use a refresh rate beyond 60Hz.

This issue has been reported to Intel and it has been fixed. At the time of writing, fix is available only in DRM Tip branch () until it lands into the standard kernel packages.

Graphics mode switch (mux switch)

MSI only provides a Windows-only application 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 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 on a similar model (see the GitHub issue and the GitHub project), but there was no success for this specific model.

Audio clipping

The audio device exhibits 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 , and with power management disabled. It is unknown what is required to make the device operate optimally under Linux.

Blank/static display after waking from sleep

Apply changes as per these instructions.