Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme - ArchWiki

# Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme

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Device | Status | Modules
Intel UHD 630 Graphics | Working | i965
Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti (Max-Q) | Working | nvidia
Intel I219-V Ethernet | Working | e1000e
Intel 9560 wireless | Working | iwlwifi
Realtek ALC285 audio | Working | snd_hda_intel
Synaptics touchpad | Working | synaptics + libinput
SunplusIT camera | Working | uvcvideo
Card reader | Working | xhci_hcd
Intel 9560 Bluetooth | Working | btusb
Intel JHL7540 Thunderbolt | Working | thunderbolt
Synaptics fingerprint reader | Not working |

The ThinkPad X1 Extreme is a thin-and-light 15.6" workstation/multimedia laptop from Lenovo's 2018 ThinkPad X lineup.

This page specifically concerns the specifics of running Arch Linux on this laptop. See Laptop for generic laptop-related information, or ThinkPad for other ThinkPad laptops. The Ubuntu certification page may also be useful.

Note: The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 is a workstation version of the same laptop which uses extremely similar hardware. Most of the information on this page should be applicable to P1 models as well.

## Hardware compatibility

### BIOS update

Despite not being strictly required for an Arch Linux install, a BIOS update is strongly recommended for general use of the laptop - the initial 1.13 version devices seem to ship with contains multiple bugs that can result in bricking the laptop: Reddit thread discussing the issue; another Reddit thread discussing a different bricking issue.

BIOS updates are available via fwupd, the Lenovo Vantage application on Windows, or from Lenovo's website.

The latest version, v1.23, is highly recommended. All information on this page generally assumes the latest BIOS unless explicitly stated.

### Hybrid graphics

Hybrid mode works via Bumblebee, nvidia-xrun or optimus-manager. Both the HDMI port and DisplayPort outputs created when using either a USB-C adapter or Thunderbolt dock are wired to the Nvidia dGPU. After installing bumblebee, the HDMI port works after modifying the following files, rebooting, and executing `intel-virtual-output -f` from an X server running on the iGPU. See Bumblebee#Output wired to the NVIDIA chip for details.

    /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

    Section "Device"
        Identifier "intelgpu0"
        # pick between "modesetting" and "intel" here (intel requires xf86-video-intel)
        #Driver "modesetting"
        Driver "intel"
    EndSection

    /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia

    Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier  "Layout0"
        Option      "AutoAddDevices" "true"
        Option      "AutoAddGPU" "false"
    EndSection

    Section "Device"
        Identifier  "DiscreteNvidia"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
        Option "ProbeAllGpus" "false"
        Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
    EndSection

    Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device "DiscreteNVidia"
    EndSection

While optimus-manager requires logging out to switch graphics, its NVIDIA performance is better than bumblebee's and it may also be the right choice for using external displays. This is because it does not require bumblebee's intel-virtual-output, which is plagued with performance issues. The following configuration has been found to work well:

    /etc/optimus-manager/optimus-manager.conf

    [intel]
    driver=intel
    modeset=yes

    [nvidia]
    modeset=yes

    [optimus]
    switching=bbswitch

Nvidia-only mode works fine with the default configuration produced by `nvidia-xconfig`, including HDMI output.

### Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt works out of the box (tested with ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Dock); see Thunderbolt for details on security. DisplayPort/HDMI port seems to be attached to the NVIDIA GPU only.

### Fan control

The fan on the right side of the laptop can be controlled by thinkpad_acpi. It seems that the fan on the left side can't be controlled yet; see this Nvidia forum post. If noise is an issue, the fan can be turned off manually by unplugging it from the motherboard, or the dust mesh can be removed.

### Other hardware

The webcam works out of the box, though it appears connected at all times, no matter the slider state (the camera reports a "disconnected" placeholder image in Windows when the protective slider is closed) - however, when the slider is closed, a completely black image is reported by the camera.

The fingerprint scanner is currently not supported in libfprint - a reverse engineering effort was ongoing here, but seems to have stalled. Upstream libfprint bug is tracked here.

Everything else works correctly out of the box.

## Software tweaks

### Dolby Atmos Effect on Linux

In order to get the same speaker sound quality/effect as on Dolby Atmos with Windows install & configure PulseAudio and pulseeffects. You can then download the Dolby Atmos preset from JackHack96's Github and enable it in the "Convolver" tab of the PulseEffects GUI.

### Battery charge thresholds

Battery charging thresholds can be configured via sysfs nodes `/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_start_threshold` and `/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_stop_threshold`, or using TLP.

### CPU throttling workaround

Warning: The safety of the settings mentioned in this section is still being investigated. The firmware limits the temperature to 80C maximum, even with the correct DPTF policy applied. This may or may not be a bug. Please don't use these settings unless you're confident you know what you're doing or the behavior is validated more.

A stress test using s-tuiAUR indicates that CPU power limit is capped at 38W, keeping CPU temperature at 81C and resulting in maximum sustained frequency around 2850 MHz on i7-8750H.

It should be possible to modify those settings by applying the correct DPTF policy, however, as of BIOS 1.23, the policies seem to be ignored by the firmware.

This can be worked around by using throttled (previously known as lenovo-throttling-fix-gitAUR[broken link: package not found]) or `intel-undervolt` (see below). It raises the power limit to 44W, which, combined with the `performance` CPU frequency scaling governor, allows the CPU to run at 3100 MHz with the temperature of 95C.

### CPU undervolting

Undervolting the CPU/Intel GPU works well with intel-undervolt. Generally -150mV seems to be a safe choice on the i7-8750H and i7-8850H CPUs, but your mileage may vary.

### Kernel parameters

As of March 2019, the following commonly used kernel parameters are known to work:

- `i915.enable_guc=2` - enables GuC/HuC firmware loading, allowing additional hardware acceleration for some video encoding configurations (likely to be default starting with Linux 5.4)

## Specifications

All information on this page has been tested on laptop part number 20MF000BUS and 20MFCTO1WW, with the following specifications:

- CPU: Intel Core i7-8750H / i7-8850H
- Graphics: Hybrid Intel UHD 630 + Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q
- Display: Innolux N156HCE-EN1 1920x1080/60Hz IPS (other vendors may be used)
- RAM: 16GB / 32GB
- SSD: Intel 7600p series 512GB NVMe / Samsung 970 Pro 1TB NVMe

Category:

- Lenovo

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