Drive the iBUYPOWER AW5 / AW5D 360 mm AIO cooler's round LCD from Linux — no Windows, no vendor software.

The AW5D's stock "digital gauge" (big CPU-temperature number, spinning fan, coloured arc + bars) is drawn and animated by the cooler's own firmware. All the host has to do is push one 64-byte USB-HID report per second with the live CPU stats. This project does exactly that, reading temperature / usage / clock straight from the Linux kernel — so the screen just works, natively.

Status: working on an iBUYPOWER unit (3402:0407, "CoolerMaster" variant) on a Ryzen 7 7800X3D / Bazzite box. The three real readouts — temperature, usage, clock — are exact. Contributions/other variants welcome.

There is (was) no Linux support for this cooler in liquidctl, CoolerControl, or any community project — the vendor only ships a Windows app (HYTE Nexus). The cooler itself, though, is a plain USB-HID device that Linux can talk to directly. The full reverse-engineering story and the byte-level protocol are in RESEARCH.md.

Each ~1 s the driver writes HID output report 0x10 (64 bytes) to the cooler's hidraw node:

There is no handshake, wake, or init packet — you open the device and write. Sensors come from sysfs: k10temp (Tctl) for temperature, /proc/stat for usage, cpufreq for the average core clock. Everything is Python 3 standard library — no pip dependencies.

• Linux with the cooler on USB (lsusb shows ID 3402:0407)
• Python 3.8+
• An AMD Ryzen box for the temperature sensor out of the box (k10temp / zenpower); Intel coretemp is also probed. Any CPU works if you point --temp-input at the right hwmonN/tempN_input.

One-liner:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/claygorman/aw5d-linux/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

Or clone and review first (recommended if you'd rather not pipe curl to bash):

git clone https://github.com/claygorman/aw5d-linux
cd aw5d-linux
./install.sh          # or, on Bazzite/SteamOS:  just install

Either way it drops the driver in ~/.local/share/aw5d-lcd/, installs a udev rule so the device is writable without root, and enables a systemd user service with lingering — so the screen updates on boot and keeps going even if you never log in graphically (or your compositor crashes to the desktop).

Uninstall with ./install.sh --uninstall (or just uninstall).

This installs cleanly with no rpm-ostree layering and no reboot — everything lives in $HOME plus a single udev rule in /etc, and the cooler's hidraw node is made user-writable, so the --user service can drive it. (There's deliberately no Flatpak/app-store build: a hardware daemon needs raw /dev/hidraw access and a systemd service, which the Flatpak sandbox can't provide.) just recipes are included for the common actions — just install, just status, just logs, just set-interval 2.

Once installed, the systemd service runs run for you — you don't normally invoke the driver by hand. But it has three commands (handy for setup + troubleshooting):

After install, an aw5d-lcd command is on your PATH:

# FIRST STOP if the screen is dark — checks device, permissions, sensors, service:
aw5d-lcd doctor

# show just the detected device + sensors:
aw5d-lcd list

# print what would be sent, without touching the device:
aw5d-lcd --dry-run --verbose

# send one frame and exit (a quick "does it light up" test):
aw5d-lcd --once --verbose

# run the live loop by hand (Ctrl-C to stop):
aw5d-lcd --verbose

The command lives at ~/.local/bin/aw5d-lcd (override the dir with AW5D_BIN_DIR, e.g. AW5D_BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin). If aw5d-lcd isn't found, add ~/.local/bin to your PATH or open a fresh shell. Running from a clone before installing? Use python3 aw5d_lcd.py … (or just doctor).

Useful flags: --interval SECONDS, --device /dev/hidrawN, --temp-input /sys/class/hwmon/hwmonN/tempN_input, --version.

On Bazzite/SteamOS the same actions are available via just — just doctor, just list, just logs, just set-interval 2.

Manage the installed service:

systemctl --user status aw5d-lcd
systemctl --user restart aw5d-lcd
journalctl --user -u aw5d-lcd -f

Update interval — how often the driver pushes fresh CPU stats to the LCD (default 1 s).

Three ways to set it (highest precedence first):

# 1. CLI flag, when running directly:
python3 aw5d_lcd.py --interval 2

# 2. Env var — the installed service reads ~/.config/aw5d-lcd.env:
echo 'AW5D_INTERVAL=2' > ~/.config/aw5d-lcd.env
systemctl --user restart aw5d-lcd

# 3. Or a full systemd override, if you prefer:
#    systemctl --user edit aw5d-lcd   → add [Service] / blank ExecStart= / new ExecStart=…

install.sh drops a commented ~/.config/aw5d-lcd.env for you (see aw5d-lcd.env.example); it's never overwritten on re-install.

# Easiest — the built-in manual updater (fetches latest, reinstalls, restarts the service):
aw5d-lcd self-update

# Or re-run the one-liner:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/claygorman/aw5d-linux/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

# Or from a clone:
git pull && ./install.sh          # or:  just update

Your ~/.config/aw5d-lcd.env (interval, etc.) is never overwritten, so your settings survive updates. To pin a version, just don't run the update — or check out a tag (git checkout v1.0.0).

The udev rule (udev/99-aw5d-lcd.rules) sets the AW5D's hidraw node to 0666 so a non-root (and lingering, session-less) service can drive it. It's an internal cooler display, not a security boundary; adjust the mode/group if your threat model differs.

Contributions welcome — especially reports for other AW5-family variants (1029 / 1030, or anything that isn't 3402:0407). See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to report a variant and the clean-room rule, and RESEARCH.md for the protocol and how it was reverse-engineered.

Same idea, other vendors — invaluable references while figuring this out:

• Blaster4385/deepcool-display-linux
• Lexonight1/thermalright-trcc-linux
• sgtaziz/lian-li-linux

This is an independent, clean-room reimplementation based on our own observations of how the hardware behaves, for interoperability. It contains no vendor code: no decompiled sources, no bundled executables, and no firmware. "iBUYPOWER", "AW5", "HYTE", and "Nexus" are trademarks of their respective owners; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

Use at your own risk. Writing to hidraw devices is inherently low-level; while this only ever sends the small status report described above, no warranty is provided (see LICENSE).

In the interest of transparency: the code and documentation in this repository were written by AI — Anthropic's Claude (Claude Code, Opus 4.x) — working interactively with Clay Gorman. Clay owns the hardware, directed the reverse-engineering, captured the USB/HID protocol from the running device, and tested every result on the physical cooler. The protocol was derived from black-box observation (see RESEARCH.md); Claude authored the driver, packaging, and docs from that shared investigation.

If you're evaluating this for trust, that's the point of saying so plainly: it's a small, dependency-free, auditable Python script that only writes the documented status report to a hidraw device. Please read it before you run it.

MIT © 2026 Clay Gorman