zenbook S 16 (um5606) linux modified edid file with extended vblank for solving the high idling mclk issue

edid_mclk_fix.bin

zenbook-um5606-mclk-fix.md

Introduction

The ASUS UM5606 (Zenbook S 16, 灵耀16 Air) laptop offers good experience when running Linux, especially ArchLinux. However the laptop's battery life has long been plagued by an issue that the APU's memory clock (MCLK) does not downscale even at light load or idle. The root cause of the issue is regarding the internal OLED panel's tight vertical blanking (vblank) timing and now has been solved. Please refer to the archwiki entry for details.

Even after downloading & installing the fix as per the wiki entry, I still see idle usage around 800-900MHz.

I also get these dmesg errors, but I don't think they're related.

$ sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'edid|edid_firmware|Requesting EDID firmware|failed'

[    4.713566] asus_wmi: fan_curve_get_factory_default (0x00110024) failed: -19
[    4.713648] asus_wmi: fan_curve_get_factory_default (0x00110025) failed: -19
[    4.713729] asus_wmi: fan_curve_get_factory_default (0x00110032) failed: -19
[    4.863991] ax88179_178a 8-1.2:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to read reg index 0x0040: -32
[    6.879978] ax88179_178a 8-1.2:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to read reg index 0x0040: -32
[    8.582145] ax88179_178a 8-1.2:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): Failed to read reg index 0x0040: -32
[    9.964805] ax88179_178a 8-1.2:1.0 enp198s0f4u1u2: Failed to read reg index 0x0040: -32
[   17.481552] Bluetooth: hci0: Failed to send wmt patch dwnld (-110)
[   17.481585] Bluetooth: hci0: Failed to set up firmware (-110)

Hi, thanks for replying. I don't think the errors here are related either. On my machine with the fix implemented I get similar errors at boot (with 6.18.6-arch1-1 kernel):

$ sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'edid|edid_firmware|Requesting EDID firmware|failed'

[    4.390239] asus_wmi: fan_curve_get_factory_default (0x00110024) failed: -19
[    4.390370] asus_wmi: fan_curve_get_factory_default (0x00110025) failed: -19
[    4.390473] asus_wmi: fan_curve_get_factory_default (0x00110032) failed: -19
[    5.831329] amdgpu 0000:c4:00.0: amdgpu: [drm] Using ACPI provided EDID for eDP-1
[   14.117225] Bluetooth: hci0: Opcode 0x2013 failed: -22

I think maybe you could first test and verify the fix using an X11 session per the wiki entry suggestions to check it is not because of the firmware not being properly loaded. If the suggested vblank value did not work, maybe setting a more aggressive vblank within the pixel clock limit can do but I'm not very sure on this. Besides, I'm also not clear if this fix has anything to do with desktop environment or compositor choice but my machine is running KDE so please also check this.

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Update on the observed mclk & fclk behavior:

With the fix the mclk should be able to downscale to around 400 MHz with the fclk jumping between 400 and ~1900 MHz, regardless of the platform_profile power mode setting (the one usually the DEs are controlling) or the fan_state setting your excellent work settles. So I think maybe testing the fix using an X11 session can be a good start.