ASUS Zenbook UX333/433/533
| Hardware | PCI/USB ID | Working? |
|---|---|---|
| GPU (Intel) | Yes | |
| GPU (Nvidia) | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | |
| Audio | Yes | |
| Touchpad | Yes | |
| Webcam | Yes | |
| Card reader | Yes | |
| Bluetooth | Yes | |
| Face recognition sensor | Yes |
ASUS announced UX333, UX433 and UX533 models. Since these models share almost the same hardware (the only difference is screen size and discrete NVidia GPU), this article covers hardware specific configuration for all ZenBook 13 (UX333), ZenBook 14 (UX433) and ZenBook 15 (UX533).
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.
Sata configuration
If your device is not seen with fdisk -l, you may need to put your sata in AHCI mode.
Navigate to BIOS, then hit F7 or click on Advanced Menu, then the Sata configuration tab and set it to AHCI.
Video
See Intel Graphics and Hardware Acceleration. For models with discrete Nvidia graphics card, also see NVIDIA Optimus.
Audio
See PulseAudio.
Touchpad
See Libinput.
Facerecognition login
This computer has built-in face recognition sensor. You can use it with the project Howdy [1]. See the howdy page for further informations.
Battery charge threshold
The procedure decribed at ASUS Zenbook UX534#Battery charge threshold works for the UX333, UX433, and UX533.
Troubleshooting
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 is 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)).
Suspend
Linux (4.17 at least) default to suspend-to-idle which is not 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.
Tips and tricks
Power saving and performance
As advertised by ASUS, these 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. These three 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