ASUS K55VD

From ArchWiki
1. Use nvidia-390xx-dkmsAUR for the driver
Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
Bluetooth Yes
Webcam Yes
Microphone Yes
Touchpad Yes
Keyboard Yes
GPU (intel) 8086:0166 Yes
GPU (nvidia)1 10de:1058 No
Ethernet 10ec:8168 Untested
Audio 8086:1e20 Yes
Wireless 168c:0032 Yes
Express Card Reader 10ec:5289 Untested

Installation

By default, MTRR size is not set correctly and MDS bug is present. To set the MTRR size correctly and avoid memory loss, add enable_mtrr_cleanup mtrr_spare_reg_nr=1 mtrr_gran_size=32M mtrr_chunk_size=128M to your kernel parameters. And to mitigate MDS, add mds=full,nosmt to kernel parameters. nosmt option disables simultaneous multithreading so if the performance decrease is too much, add mds=full instead.

Firmware

BIOS update

BIOS updates are only done manually:

  1. Download the latest BIOS image
  2. Plug a USB drive and format it to FAT32
    1. Find the USB drive's name with fdisk -l
    2. Install dosfstools
    3. Format the USB drive to FAT32
  3. Copy K55VDAS.xxx file to the USB drive
  4. Restart the PC and open BIOS with F2
  5. Get to the Advanced menu
  6. Select Start Easy Flash
  7. Select the K55VDAS.xxx with arrow keys and enter.

UEFI Shell

Few ASUS laptops (and also K55VD) provide an option called Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device. It is not accessible by default but can be accessible by following the given instructions at Unified Extensible Firmware Interface#Launching UEFI Shell

Function keys

Key Visible?1 Marked?2 Effect
Fn+F1 Yes Yes XF86Sleep
Fn+F2 Yes Yes XF86RFKill
Fn+F3 Yes No XF86Mail
Fn+F4 Yes No XF86WWW
Fn+F5 Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F6 Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+F7 Yes Yes XF86ScreenSaver
Fn+F8 Practically3 Yes Super+P
Fn+F9 Yes Yes XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F10 Yes Yes XF86AudioMute
Fn+F11 Yes Yes XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+F12 Yes Yes XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+T Yes No XF86Phone
Fn+C Yes Yes XF86Launch1
Fn+V Yes Yes XF86WebCam
Fn+NumPadReturn Yes Yes XF86Calculator
  1. The key is visible to xev and similar tools.
  2. The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.
  3. Redirects to Super + P for some reason.

See also