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	Not working

ASUS announced UX430 and UX530 models. Since these models share almost the same hardware (the only difference is screen size and discrete NVidia graphics card), 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 Bumblebee.

Audio

See PulseAudio.

Touchpad

See Libinput.

Fingerprint sensor

Note: This is likely not going to work at all. See Talk:ASUS Zenbook UX430/UX530#Fingerprint Reader.

Install fingerprint sensor driver libfprint-elantech-git^AUR, then see Fprint and you might be also interested in Fingerprint GUI.

Suspend

Linux (4.17 at least) default to suspend-to-idle which isn't 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.

Troubleshooting

Linux kernel 4.13 issues

Bug references: 197469 and 197449

Description: Unstable CPU frequencies staying at minimum of 800Mhz-1600Mhz instead of 400-700Mhz. This wastes battery and generates heat, causing fan to spin more aggressively. Also KVM crashes running Windows 10 VM with all available VirtIO features.

Fix: Use kernel version 4.12.* (or earlier) or 4.14.4 (or further). Avoid any 4.13.* versions.

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 or hda-verb^AUR 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.

Fan spins all the time

See Fan speed control#NBFC. Also see #Linux kernel 4.13 issues

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

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.

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

Note: Microsoft online support confirmed that the code is valid, but because you are unable to activate it (Windows fails to activate and asks for another code), they offered 2 options - replace activation code with another one for 40$ or contact OEM (ASUS) about this issue.

ASUS confirmed, that in order to "use" this activation key, you need to bring this laptop to repair service so they can "restore" system using ASUS OEM Windows 10 image. They do not provide this image for download.