ASUS Zenbook UX430/UX530
| Device | Status |
| Intel | Working |
| Nvidia | Working |
| HDMI (USB cable) | Working |
| Ethernet (USB cable) | Working |
| Wireless | Working |
| Audio | Working |
| Touchpad | Working |
| Camera | Working |
| Card Reader | Working |
| Bluetooth | Working |
| Function keys | Working |
| Fingerprint Sensor | Partially working |
| Ambient Light Sensor | Partially working |
| Battery charge threshold | Working |
ASUS announced UX430 and UX530 models. Since these models share almost the same hardware (the only difference is screen size and discrete NVidia GPU), this article covers hardware specific configuration for all UX430UA, UX430UQ, UX530UQ and UX530UX models.
Configuration
Secure Boot (option)
In order to boot any Linux operating system, navigate to BIOS, then hit F7 or click on Advanced Menu, then the Security tab and set Secure Boot to Off.
If the aforementioned Secure Boot option is a menu rather than an on-or-off option, click on Secure Boot, Key Management, then Reset to Setup Mode and confirm in the dialog.
Video
See Intel Graphics and Hardware Acceleration. For models with discrete Nvidia graphics card, also see NVIDIA Optimus.
Audio
See PulseAudio.
Touchpad
See Libinput.
Fingerprint sensor
The fingerprint sensor is supported since Fprint v0.99.0, even through it is supported it does not work reliably. This is due to the fingerprint small sensor[1].
Ambient Light Sensor
The Ambient Light Sensor should work on UX430UQ[2] and a patch for UX430UNR is available[3].
Battery charge threshold
Most newer Zenbooks supports specifying a charge stop threshold (see ASUS Battery Health Charging for more information).
The battery charge stop threshold can be set by modifying the EC registers, which can be done with acpi_call. Finding the correct EC register to modify, is the tricky part.
You can check the current threshold and battery percent, with the following commands:
$ read () { echo "${1}" > /proc/acpi/call; printf "%d\n" $(sed 's/\x0.*//g' /proc/acpi/call); }
$ read "\_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0.RRAM 0x3af"
100 # Percent at which the battery will stop charging (default is 100)
$ read "\_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0.RRAM 0x3b0"
80 # current battery percent, should match: cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/capacity
The threshold can be changed with the following command (the threshold is reset when the computer is power cycled):
$ echo "\_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0.WRAM 0x3af <battery percent in hex, ex: 0x50 for 80%>" > /proc/acpi/call
The hex value can be found with printf "0x%x\n" 80.
To change the threshold at boot it is possible to use systemd-tmpfiles.
/etc/tmpfiles.d/battery.conf
w /proc/acpi/call - - - - \\_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0.WRAM 0x3af 0x50 # 80%
Troubleshooting
Headphones audio is too low
Linux kernel version 4.14 and earlier has a bug, where you may notice that the audio through the headphones is too low (upstream bug). In kernel version 4.15 you have to pull out and plug in back your headset after resume in order to fix the low audio.
In order to fix it, install alsa-tools and create the file:
/usr/local/bin/fix_headphones_audio.sh
#!/bin/bash while true; do DEVICE=`ls /dev/snd/hwC[[:print:]]*D0 | head -n 1` if [ ! -z "$DEVICE" ]; then hda-verb "$DEVICE" 0x20 SET_COEF_INDEX 0x67 hda-verb "$DEVICE" 0x20 SET_PROC_COEF 0x3000 break fi sleep 1 done
Then create a systemd script with the following content:
/etc/systemd/system/fix_headphones_audio.service
[Unit] Description=Fix headphones audio after boot & resume. After=multi-user.target suspend.target hibernate.target [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=/bin/sh '/usr/local/bin/fix_headphones_audio.sh' [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target suspend.target hibernate.target
And finally, start and enable fix_headphones_audio.service.
Microcode
During boot you might get the message [Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version: 0x52 (or later). See Microcode to resolve it.
Nvidia issues with Bumblebee
It is likely that it's one of these issues:
- You used a power management application (especially Powertop). See bumblebee#Broken power management with kernel 4.8 for more information.
- You suspended your laptop and resumed, and are now unable to start your GPU, see Bumblebee#Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0 (Bumblebee daemon reported: error: [XORG] (EE) NVIDIA(GPU-0)).
Headset Microphone
You may encounter an issue where your headset microphone is not being detected. To fix this, create this file and restart your system:
/etc/modprobe.d/fix_headset_microphone.conf
# Fix an issue where your headset microphone is not being detected: options snd-hda-intel model=dell-headset-multi
No sound (after Windows)
There seems to be a bug in the firmware that prevents the embedded sound card from working in Arch after Windows has been restarted. A complete shutdown of the laptop is required to get the sound card working again.
Suspend
Linux (4.17 at least) default to suspend-to-idle which is not very power effective. This is probably due to this change in 4.14-rc1. For better power effective you can use suspend-to-ram by adding mem_sleep_default=deep to the kernel cmdline.
If you encounter kernel panic when you suspend, issue can be fix using LTS kernel, plus following kernel option i915.enable_dc=0. No additional options need.
Fan always active
Tips and tricks
Power saving and performance
As advertised by ASUS, both laptops are capable to last up to 9 hours on battery. In order to achieve this, see:
- BIOS update - It is generally recommended to update BIOS, as it usually brings performance, power-saving and security features.
- Power Saving - List of general recommendations to increase battery life.
- Improving performance - List of general recommendations to increase performance.
- SSD - Tips and tricks for Solid State Drives. Both laptops ship M.2 SSD by default.
- Undervolting CPU - Decrease voltage for Intel CPU (reduce battery drain, reduce heat and therefore - reduce fan speed)
Extract Windows 10 license key
The laptop comes with Windows 10 preinstalled and the activation key is hardcoded into the firmware. If you replace Windows with Linux, then hardcoded activation key is useless. You might want to extract it and use somewhere else (e.g. virtualized Windows 10):
# grep -aPo '[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}-[\w]{5}' /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM