YAMDCC - Yet Another MSI (Dragon) Center Clone

(formerly known as MSI Fan Control)

A fast, lightweight alternative to MSI Center for MSI laptops, written in C#.

Please read the whole README (or at least the Supported Laptops and FAQ sections) before downloading.

Disclaimers

• While this program is mostly complete, I still consider it to be alpha-quality software! You will likely encounter bugs or missing features!
• This program requires low-level access to some of your computer hardware to apply settings. While no issues should arise from the use of this program, I (Sparronator9999) and any other contributers shall not be held responsible for any damage to your laptop that result from your use of this program.
• I (Sparronator9999) am currently transitioning to Linux for various reasons (and more, outside of the links provided), and so I may no longer be able to test to make sure no one else broke something in the near future.
• This program, repository and its authors are not affiliated with Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. in any way, shape, or form.

Features

• Fan control: Change the fan curves for your CPU and GPU fans, including fan speeds, temperature thresholds, and Full Blast (a.k.a. Cooler Boost in MSI Center).
• Performance mode: (coming soon) MSI laptops have their own performance mode setting (not to be confused with Windows' built-in power plans). You can change it here
• Charging threshold: MSI laptops come with the ability to limit the battery charge percentage, which can reduce battery degradation. This utility can set your charge threshold to whatever you want.
• Lightweight: MSI Fan Control takes up less than a megabyte of disk space when installed, and only works when re-applying configs (manually, or when rebooting or waking up from sleep mode).
• Configurable: Almost all settings (including those not accessible through the config GUI) can be changed with the power of XML.

Screenshots

Note: this screenshot is outdated. I will update it Soon™, after other features are finished.

Supported Laptops

Currently, only the MSI GF63 Thin 11SC is supported, with more MSI laptop support Coming Soon™.

In the meantime, you must make your own config for your laptop (tutorial Coming Soon™).

This should be as easy as supplying your laptop's default fan curves to the Defaut profile in a copy of an existing MSI laptop config, however some MSI laptops have a few extra setting located at different EC registers. Try looking up similar fan control utilities (most are written for Linux).

Other laptop brands are not officially supported. You can still try and make your own config, but chances are you're looking for NoteBook FanControl instead.

Please avoid asking me (or other people) in the issue tracker to create a config for you. Unless we have your specific laptop model (which we probably don't), we will not be able to help you outside of the general instructions.

FAQ

Can you please make a Linux version?

Soon™.

Use one of the many other projects on GitHub instead while you wait.

What versions of Windows do you support?

This program is tested by me (Sparronator9999) on 64-bit Windows 10 (specifically LTSC 2021). It should, however, run on any verison of Windows 10, 32- or 64-bit.

Windows 11 should be supported as well, but I have not tested it. Open an issue if you have trouble with Windows 11.

Older versions of Windows may also work, but with no support from me.

Why do I need administrator privileges to run this program?

The YAMDCC service requires administrator privileges to install and communicate with the WinRing0 driver, which allows for low-level hardware access (required for EC access). This is restricted to privileged programs for obvious reasons.

My laptop isn't supported! What do I do?

See above.

Can you write a config for my laptop?

Again, see above.

Help! My laptop stopped booting/is doing weird stuff!

Reset your EC (MSI laptops only):

Shut down the laptop if it's on (force shut down if needed), then find the EC reset button (on the GF63 Thin 11SC, it's a small hole located on the bottom of the laptop next to the charge port) and press it with the end of a paperclip (or similarly small object, e.g. SIM eject tool) for at least 5 seconds. Try rebooting.

If the issue persists, try unplugging all power sources, including the laptop battery and CMOS/clock battery (requires disassembly of laptop), for a few seconds. Re-connect everything, then re-assemble and attempt another reboot. This will reset your BIOS settings.

Users of other laptop brands will need to look up instructions for their laptop.

How does this program work?

YAMDCC works by accessing your laptop's embedded controller (aka, the EC). Many settings that can be configured with MSI Center are stored here, including fan curve, performance mode, and the Win/Fn key swap setting.

Dark mode?

Due to WinForms limitations, no.

Technical explanation: A few specific WinForms controls used by MSI Fan Control look really bad when trying to recolour them to be dark themed. Also, built-in dialog boxes (for C# programmers, think MessageBox.Show) cannot be recoloured from their default white theme. Also, I have little to no experience with other UI kits (e.g. WPF).

.NET (Core) 5/6/8/<insert latest .NET version>!

Soon™.

Converting to .NET should be easy, but last time I attempted it, the YAMDCC service broke horribly (even when installing the Microsoft.Windows.Compatibility NuGet package).

.NET support will come when I'm ready, and when I've figured out how to write a Windows service in .NET.

Doesn't WinRing0 have security issues?

Yes, however YAMDCC installs the driver such that only programs with administrator privileges can access the driver functions (something that should have been done in the first place by the driver itself), largely mitigating this vulnerability.

However, if YAMDCC finds the driver already installed, it will use that (potentially vulnerable) version instead. If it was installed with, e.g. LibreHardwareMonitor, you should be fine, as they implement the same fix.

The updated fork of WinRing0 updates the driver itself (WinRing0.sys) to apply this fix, however binary releases of the driver aren't provided due to Microsoft's driver signing requirements, and I'm too smooth-brained to write my own EC access kernel driver (but apparently not an entire fan control utility from scratch, including the WinRing0 interface code...), and I'd have to get it signed anyways.

Please read the disclaimer, especially the bold text, if you haven't already.

Issues

If your question wasn't answered in the FAQ, feel free to open an issue request. Please make sure to use the correct issue template for your problem.

However, know that I may not check my GitHub page very often when I'm not working on anything, so your issue may remain open for a while before I answer it.

Roadmap

• Config UI fixes:
  • Actually implement the "revert to last saved config" functionality
  • Implement missing tooltips
• Give the program code a once-over before doing anything else (Started)
• Add more extra options for MSI laptops (from MSI Center):
  • Performance mode selection
  • Fn/Win key swap
• Config generation for MSI laptops
  • This would only work because many MSI laptops have almost identical EC register locations for all the relevent settings we change
  • The only thing we need to do is get the default fan curve from the user's laptop, and add it to the default fan profile.
• Command line support
  • The beginning of a CLI for MSI Fan Control exists, just not publicly yet
• .NET support
  • As of writing, .NET 8 is the current LTS, and will be targeted should I decide to tackle .NET.
• Support for editing laptop config registers using the GUI interface
  • This would allow for creating configs for other laptop brands from the config UI
  • Currently, the only way to do this is to edit the XML directly

Contributing

See the build instructions below to build this project.

If you would like to contribute to the project with bug fixes, new features, or new configs, feel free to open a pull request. Please include the following:

• Bug Fixes/Improvements: Describe the changes you made and why they are important or useful.
• New Config: Not currently accepting new configs.

Download

Development builds are availabe through GitHub Actions.

Alternatively, if you don't have a GitHub account, you can download the latest build from nightly.link.

(You probably want the Release build, unless you're debugging issues with the program)

Alternatively, you can build the program yourself.

Build

Using Visual Studio

1. Install Visual Studio 2022 with the .NET Desktop Development workload checked.
2. Download the code repository, or clone it with git.
3. Extract the downloaded code, if needed.
4. Open MSIFanControl.sln in Visual Studio.
5. Click Build > Build Solution to build everything.
6. Your output, assuming default build settings, is located in MSIFanControl.GUI\bin\Debug\net48\.
7. ???
8. Profit!

Make sure to only use matching msifcsvc.exe and MSIFanControl.exe together, otherwise you may encounter issues (that means net stop msifcsvc first, then compile).

From command line

1. Follow steps 1-3 above to install Visual Studio and download the code.
2. Open Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022 and cd to your project directory.
3. Run msbuild /t:restore to restore the solution, including NuGet packages.
4. Run msbuild MSIFanControl.sln /p:platform="Any CPU" /p:configuration="Debug" to build the project, substituting Debug with Release (or Any CPU with x86 or x64) as
5. Your output should be located in MSIFanControl.GUI\bin\Debug\net48\, assuming you built with the above unmodified command.
6. ???
7. Profit!

License and Copyright

Copyright © 2023-2024 Sparronator9999.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Third-party Libraries

This project makes use of the following third-party libraries:

• Named Pipe Wrapper, as MSIFanControl.IPC, for communication between the service and UI program.
• WinRing0 for low-level hardware access required to read/write the EC.