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!
• While measures are taken to reduce the program crash change, you will still likely encounter bugs while using this program, especially if feeding the program garbage configs.
• This program requires low-level access to some of your computer hardware to apply settings. While no issues should arise from this, I (Sparronator9999) and any other contributers shall not be held responsible if this program fries your computer.
• Additionally, if you do something silly with the program like turn off all your fans while running under full load, we will not be held responsible for any damage you cause to your own hardware from your use of this program.
• Linux is not yet supported. Please don't beg me for Linux support, it will come when I can be bothered (and when I figure out how to run background services/daemons on Linux).
• 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). This allows you to fix a curve that is not aggressive enough under full load, or to turn your fans off when your computer is idle.
• Performance mode: 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: This program can limit how much your laptop's battery charges to, which can help reduce battery degradation, especially if you leave your laptop plugged in all the time.
• Lightweight: YAMDCC takes up less than a megabyte of disk space when installed, and is designed to be light on your laptop's CPU.
• Configurable: Almost all settings (including those not accessible through the config GUI) can be changed with the power of XML.

Screenshots

Supported Laptops

Currently, only the MSI GF63 Thin 11SC is supported, with support for more MSI laptops 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.

Comparison

1: As of v2.0.38, MSI Center takes about 950 MB of storage space when counting the UWP app (749 MB) and the files installed on first launch to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI (205 MB). YAMDCC's installed size is based on the Release build of commit dc819a6, and includes all program files, but excludes config XMLs.

2: MSI Center only supports setting the charge threshold to 60%, 80%, or 100%, while YAMDCC can set this to anything between 0 and 100% (with 0 meaning charge to 100% always).

3: YAMDCC only supports monitoring the CPU/GPU temperatures and fan speeds via EC.

Roadmap

Below are some changes I would like to make before a 1.0 release of YAMDCC:

• [ ] Config UI fixes:
  • [x] Actually implement the "revert to last saved config" functionality
  • [ ] Other fixes as they get pointed out
• [ ] 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.
• [ ] Revamp IPC between service and config applications (started)
  • Currently, there is no "acknowledgement" system for commands sent to the service, even for commands that expect data to be returned. This means no errors if the service crashes before fulfilling a received command.

Below are some planned features for potential future releases:

• [ ] Command line support
  • Development of a CLI application for YAMDCC has started, but isn't publicly available yet
• [ ] 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
• [ ] Plugin system for additional optional features
• [ ] .NET support
  • Mandatory for Linux support
  • The GUI should compile on .NET 8, but hasn't been tested yet
  • The Windows service on the other hand... is going to be interesting. Even with the Microsoft.Windows.Compatibility package installed, I still wasn't able to get the service to run without issues.
• [ ] Linux support (not guaranteed)
  • Now this would require some figuring out, and may end up being a seperate project that's compatible with this project's configs.

Download

Development builds are available 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 YAMDCC.sln in Visual Studio.
5. Click Build > Build Solution to build everything.
6. Your output, assuming default build settings, is located in YAMDCC.GUI\bin\Debug\net48\.
7. ???
8. Profit!

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

From the 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 YAMDCC.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 YAMDCC.GUI\bin\Debug\net48\, assuming you built with the above unmodified command.
6. ???
7. Profit!

Issues

If your question isn't already answered in the FAQ or issues megathread, feel free to open an issue. Please make sure to use the correct issue template for your problem.

Contributing

See the build instructions 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.

FAQ

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.

Can you please make a Linux version?

Soon™.

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

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.

Why do I need administrator privileges to run this program?

Because admin privileges are required to install kernel drivers. Simple as that.

For security reasons, only programs with admin privileges are allowed to communicate with the YAMDCC service.

Why does this program need a kernel driver?

Because communicating with the EC requires low-level hardware access, something only possible from within the kernel. This program achieves this with WinRing0.

Doesn't WinRing0 have security issues?

Yes, however YAMDCC mitigates this by installing the driver such that only programs run with administrator privileges can communicate with the driver.

Why wasn't this done by the driver itself in the first place, you might ask? Honestly, I don't know how this slipped through during development, but here we are. Unfortunately the updated fork of WinRing0 that does fix this vulnerability driver-side doesn't have a binary release due to Microsoft's strict driver signing requirements.

NOTE: If YAMDCC finds the driver already installed, it may try to use that (potentially vulnerable) driver instead. If it was installed with, e.g. LibreHardwareMonitor, you should be fine, as they implement the same fix that YAMDCC does.

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

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.

Dark mode?

Due to WinForms limitations, no.

Technical explanation: A few specific WinForms controls used by YAMDCC 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>!

Probably not for Windows (unless it goes EOL, which I doubt will happen for a while).

If Linux support ever comes, it will be using .NET (since .NET Framework isn't supported on Linux).

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:

• My fork of Named Pipe Wrapper for communication between the service and UI program (called YAMDCC.IPC in the source files).
• WinRing0 for low-level hardware access required to read/write the EC.