MSI Vector A18 HX A9WX

Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
Touchpad 04F3:31FD Yes
Keyboard 0db0:0db0 Yes
GPU (Radeon 610M) 1002:13c0 Yes
GPU (Nvidia) Untested
10de:2c19 Yes
Webcam 5986:1193 Yes
Ethernet 10ec:8125 Yes
Wi-Fi 14c3:7925 Yes
Bluetooth Yes
Speakers 1022:15e3 Yes
Microphone No
TPM 2.0 Yes

MSI Vector A18 HX A9WX refers to the following laptop models:

  • MSI Vector A18 HX A9WIG
  • MSI Vector A18 HX A9WHG

The only apparent difference between the models is the dedicated NVIDIA GPU (RTX 5080 Max-Q or RTX 5070-Ti Max-Q) and the varied display options that both models have.

The MSI Raider A18 HX A9WX models are nearly identical to the Vector A9WX, the only difference being more RGB Leds on the Raiders and there being an RTX 5090 model among the Raiders.

These laptops seem to work extremely well out of the box with the biggest issue being that the microphone does not work at all, and lack of support for interacting with the mux switch and rgb keyboard lighting from linux.

Video

Integrated AMD graphics

The integrated AMD Radeon 610M works.

Dedicated NVIDIA graphics

The RTX 5080 Max-Q works with nvidia-open 570.153.02, but not with 575.57.08. See Git issue.

It is a safe assumption that the RTX 5070-Ti version suffers from the same issue.

Audio

Speakers work perfectly out of the box.

Microphone is not detected. It was not detected on windows 10 either, so it's possible that laptop doesn't have a mic or the testing was done on a defective model (since the soundcard works the microphone should work too)

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are on the same MediaTek Corp. Device 7925 chip.

Works well out of the box.

Occasionally after a reboot bluetooth and/or wifi will malfunction. This can be fixed with a cold boot.

Touchpad

It works, gestures and palm detection have not been tested.

'Disable while typing' does not work.

Function keys

Key Detected Labeled Effect
Fn+F1 Yes Yes XF86AudioMute
Fn+F2 Yes Yes XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+F3 Yes Yes XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+F4 Yes Yes XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F5 Yes Yes XF86AudioMicMute
Fn+F6 e057 Yes XF86Bluetooth
Fn+F7 Yes Yes XF86Tools
Fn+F8 Hardware Yes Keyboard Brightness
Fn+F9 No Yes XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F10 No Yes XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+F11 Yes Yes Super_R + P (Screen switch)
Fn+PgUp Yes Yes Home
Fn+PgDn Yes Yes End
Fn+PrtScr Yes No Super_L + Shift_L + S
Fn+Delete Yes No Insert
Fn+Up Hardware Yes Fan Mode
Fn+Left Yes Yes XF86AudioPlay
Fn+Down e073 Yes Crosshair
Fn+Right e026 Yes Display Off
Fn+B Yes No XF86Pause
Fn+P Yes No XF86Pause
Fn+L Yes No Scroll Lock
Fn+Esc Hardware Yes Fn-Lock(Hardware) +
Fn+Esc e075 Yes Unknown
Fn+A e00d No Unknown

Binding unbound keys

When pressing a key that isn't bound properly (like the bluetooth key) dmesg will output a message like the following:

   [16976.893634] atkbd serio0: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xf3 on isa0060/serio0).
   [16976.893646] atkbd serio0: Use 'setkeycodes e057 <keycode>' to make it known.

So, to bind those keys you run setkeycodes [key] [scancode] as root for each key.

Available scancodes can be found in /usr/include/linux/input-event-codes.h.


Examples

setkeycodes e057 $(awk '/KEY_BLUETOOTH/ {print $3}' /usr/include/linux/input-event-codes.h)
setkeycodes e00d 112 # KEY_MACRO
setkeycodes e073 $(awk '/KEY_BRIGHTNESSDOWN/ {print $3}' /usr/include/linux/input-event-codes.h)
setkeycodes e026 $(awk '/KEY_BRIGHTNESSUP/ {print $3}' /usr/include/linux/input-event-codes.h)
setkeycodes e075 247 # KEY_RFKILL/Airplane Mode

RGB Backlighting

Besides the keyboard lighting button, there is currently no way to control the RGB lighting. If you change the RGB lighting from Windows, the changes will stay even after rebooting into linux.

There is a gitlab issue for openrgb here.