MSI GT72-6QE

BIOS

Ensure that you have the latest BIOS and EC firmware from MSI's website. Once you have updated, disable C-States and Secure Boot in the BIOS.

Installation

This notebook has a physical hardware button to switch between the Intel and discrete (Nvidia 980m) GPU. Before installing Arch, boot into Windows and use the button to switch to the Intel display adapter. Also #Networking in Linux might not work out of the box, so you may need to use a USB networking dongle or prepare your own.

Now you can follow the installation guide as usual. Remember to install the NVIDIA driver as well (Nouveau might not work). After installing, boot back into Windows and use the button to switch the display adapter back to the NVIDIA GPU.

Networking

This notebook comes with "Killer" Ethernet and Wireless PCI adapters (Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32) Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. Device 1535). Wireless uses the Ath10k driver library which is included in linux-firmware, though you may need to download the latest firmware files from Github in order to get it working after installation.

1. Download board-2.bin and firmware-4.bin_WLAN.RM.2.0-00180-QCARMSWPZ-1
2. Rename them to board.bin and firmware-4.bin, respectively, and mark them as executable.
3. Move both files to /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/

Reboot and then the built-in wireless NIC should work.

Troubleshooting

Frequent Kernel Panics

By default, the linux kernel may have issues with the Intel Skylake architecture of this notebook resulting in frequent kernel panics. To resolve this issue, you may need to disable KMS and the high resolution clock by adding the following kernel parameters: nomodeset nohz=off clocksource=tsc