valkyrie-b240-linux

English | 简体中文

Unofficial Linux (Ubuntu) tools for the Valkyrie B240 AIO liquid cooler: a system-monitor panel on the cooler's 2" LCD, and a desktop app for pump and fan control.

Unofficial project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Valkyrie. "Valkyrie" and "B240" are used only to identify the supported hardware.

• Monitor panel on the cooler LCD: clock, CPU / GPU temperature and load, pump and fan RPM, RAM and VRAM usage
• "B240 Cooler Control" desktop app (GTK4 / libadwaita), shown in the system language (English and Simplified Chinese so far)
  • Pump, radiator fans and the motherboard's six system fan headers each set to BIOS auto, fixed speed, or a temperature curve (drag to edit)
  • Temperature sources: CPU Tctl, CPU CCD, motherboard CPU sensor, NVIDIA GPU, or the hotter of CPU and GPU
  • Live preview of the cooler LCD, refresh interval, temperature color thresholds
• Safety (enforced by the background fan service; the config cannot bypass it)
  • Minimum speed: pump 50%, fans 20%
  • Full speed as soon as the CPU or a fan's temperature source reaches the emergency threshold (default 95°C)
  • Fans go back to BIOS control if a temperature cannot be read for 3 seconds, or if the service stops or crashes

Known limitations:

• Fan and pump control relies on the nct6687d driver, so it only works on boards with an NCT6687 chip (mostly MSI).
• CPU temperature comes from k10temp, so only AMD CPUs are supported for now.
• GPU temperature comes from nvidia-smi; without an NVIDIA GPU it shows as empty and everything else still works.
• Only tested in a GNOME X11 session.

git clone https://github.com/Yutong-Feng/valkyrie-b240-linux.git
cd valkyrie-b240-linux
./install.sh

install.sh does everything in one go (it asks before each step that needs sudo):

1. Installs missing packages with apt (GTK4 / libadwaita, Pillow, gettext, …)
2. Downloads, builds and installs the two kernel drivers with DKMS, if they are missing (see below)
3. Installs the app to ~/.local/share/valkyrie-b240, with the UI translations, two systemd user services, the launcher and the icon
4. Installs two udev rules

Reboot once after installing; only then does the cooler LCD start showing the panel (see "How it works" below).

Both are pinned to the revisions this project was tested with (see the top of install.sh), and DKMS rebuilds them automatically on kernel updates. To rebuild them by hand, e.g. after a major kernel upgrade:

./install.sh --drivers

With Secure Boot enabled, DKMS signs the modules with a MOK key; enroll it in the blue MOK screen on the next boot.

sudo apt install dkms git make gcc rsync linux-headers-$(uname -r)

git clone https://github.com/AFSFerreira/ms91xx-linux-drm.git
cd ms91xx-linux-drm
sudo rsync -a --exclude .git ./ /usr/src/msdisp-3.0.3.13/
sudo dkms add msdisp/3.0.3.13
sudo dkms install msdisp/3.0.3.13
cd ..

git clone https://github.com/Fred78290/nct6687d.git
cd nct6687d
make dkms/install
echo nct6687 | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/nct6687.conf
echo "blacklist nct6683" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nct6683-blacklist.conf

• Open "B240 Cooler Control" from the app grid. Changes apply within about a second; there is no save button.
• Two background services start automatically when you log in:
  • valkyrie-lcd: drives the cooler LCD
  • valkyrie-fan: applies fan settings; everything defaults to BIOS auto, so fan behaviour is unchanged until you pick another mode

systemctl --user status valkyrie-lcd valkyrie-fan
journalctl --user -u valkyrie-lcd -n 50

Settings are stored in ~/.config/valkyrie-cooler/config.json.

The app follows the system language (LANGUAGE / LC_ALL / LC_MESSAGES / LANG) and falls back to English when no translation exists. To start it in a specific language:

LANGUAGE=zh_CN python3 ~/.local/share/valkyrie-b240/valkyrie_gui.py

New translations are welcome: copy po/valkyrie-b240.pot to po/<language>.po (for example po/ja.po), fill in the msgstr lines, and run ./install.sh again. After changing UI strings, refresh the template and existing translations with:

xgettext --language=Python --keyword=_ --from-code=UTF-8 -o po/valkyrie-b240.pot src/valkyrie_gui.py
msgmerge --update po/zh_CN.po po/valkyrie-b240.pot

• The panel is 320×240, but the cooler only displays a 640×480@60 (VESA) signal; the 800×600 mode listed in its EDID just shows the built-in logo. It shows only the top 640×240 of that signal, squeezed to half width. So the program draws a 320×240 panel, stretches it 2× horizontally and places it at the top of the frame.
• If the desktop (X11) treats the cooler as a monitor, X switches the whole desktop to a software mouse cursor, because this "GPU" has no hardware cursor, and the pointer flickers whenever windows redraw. 72-valkyrie-lcd.rules therefore moves the device off seat0 so the desktop ignores it, and valkyrie-lcd drives it directly over DRM/KMS. The desktop grabs the device as soon as the driver loads, so a reboot is needed once after installing the rule.
• Known driver bug: it copies frames using the size of the mode the hardware was last enabled with (fbdev sets 800×600 at boot) instead of the framebuffer's size. A smaller framebuffer is read out of bounds, the kernel oopses, and the device hangs until reboot. This project allocates the framebuffer for the driver's largest mode (1920×1080) and turns the output off before switching modes. If a modeset still fails, it is not retried until the next boot, so hung processes do not pile up.

• Controlled through the hwmon pwmN / pwmN_enable files exposed by nct6687d: the pump is on the Pump Fan header, the radiator fans on CPU Fan, and case fans on System Fan #1–6.
• Writing PWM values needs a udev rule (99-valkyrie-fan.rules) that grants these files to your user group. install.sh installs it, and the app's "Authorize…" button can add it at any time.

./install.sh --uninstall

All fans are handed back to BIOS control first. Settings in ~/.config/valkyrie-cooler and the two kernel drivers are kept; the uninstaller prints the commands to remove the drivers too.

This project is source-available, not open source. It is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0.

• Noncommercial use is free: personal use, study, research, hobby projects, and use by charities, schools, public research institutions and government bodies. You may modify and share the code under the same terms.
• Commercial use requires a separate license, which may be paid. This includes use by a company, in a product, or bundled with hardware. To ask for one, open an issue or contact @Yutong-Feng.

Contributions are welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

The two drivers above are separate third-party projects under GPL-2.0 and are not included in this repository; install.sh downloads them from their upstream repositories.