Common questions about what GhostDeck can and can't do, and how it behaves next to MSI Center.
Unofficial project - not affiliated with or endorsed by MSI. "MSI", "MSI Center" and "Cooler Boost" are trademarks of Micro-Star International, used here descriptively only.
Can I control the fans in profiles other than Extreme?
Yes. GhostDeck has a Fan curve tab that runs a custom CPU/GPU curve on Balanced, Extreme and Super Battery (MSI Center only lets you in Extreme), and it's fully reversible. There's also Fan Boost (both fans to max) that works in any profile, via a click, a tray entry or a hotkey.
The one exception is Silent: on this EC the Silent power cap and the "custom curve" mode share the same byte (0xD4), so enabling a curve in Silent necessarily drops it to Balanced power - the app warns you first. If what you want is quiet and low power, that is exactly what Silent already gives you, and a curve can't beat it without giving up the cap.
Can I set an exact wattage (a power slider / PL1 / PL2)? Not the way this app works - and that's actually the core reason it exists. The app doesn't set watts directly: it flips MSI's built-in EC power modes (the Silent / Balanced / Extreme presets), and the firmware decides the wattage for each mode. Setting an arbitrary PL1/PL2 number would mean writing Intel's power-limit registers - but on these MSI laptops those are locked (MSR is BIOS-locked, MMIO is overridden by Intel DTT). That's exactly why ThrottleStop and Intel XTU can't cap wattage on most of these machines either. MSI's EC doesn't expose a writable power-limit register, and the msi-ec maps don't show one for the boards I've checked - so from software, on a locked machine, a free slider isn't on the table. In practice, "Silent" is the low-PL policy MSI removed (it drops package power from ~100 W to ~30 W under load, verifiable in HWiNFO), so the profiles are your power control here.
There is one route to a real slider, though - outside this app. If your model lets you disable Overclocking Lock / CFG Lock in the hidden Advanced BIOS, the MSR power-limit registers open up, and ThrottleStop (or Intel XTU) can then set PL1/PL2 directly - that's your actual watt slider. Caveats: (1) on many 13th-gen MSI these BIOS options are greyed out or locked by microcode, so it's not guaranteed; (2) it's a manual, at-your-own-risk change in an unofficial BIOS menu; (3) even after the MSR is unlocked, Intel DTT can still override the limit via MMIO.
Why don't my changes show up in MSI Center? Can I run both? You can run both. MSI Center caches its own UI state and doesn't live-read the EC, so it won't reflect changes made by anything else - but that's purely a display thing: the change still applies (GhostDeck writes the exact same EC bytes MSI Center writes; verify it in HWiNFO). Each app only touches the EC when you actually do something, so they don't fight over it. GhostDeck also reads live state, so if you switch a profile in MSI Center, GhostDeck syncs on its own. The only niche caveat: if you enable automatic AC/battery profile switching in both apps at once, their automations could ping-pong - but that's off by default here.
Can GhostDeck control my keyboard backlight? Why not on my laptop? It depends on which of the two backlight designs your machine has, and the difference is in the hardware, not in the app.
Single-colour or zone backlight. Brightness is one register in the Embedded Controller, exactly like a power profile, and msi-ec documents it per model. GhostDeck ships that control: off / low / mid / high as a tile on the Scenarios tab, an assignable hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+F6, disabled by default), --kbd on the command line and a field in scenes. It follows your Fn key, so both stay in sync. Around 82 firmware families are covered; if yours is one of them, the tile simply appears.
Per-key RGB backlight (SteelSeries, e.g. Raider GE78HX). The tile does not appear, and that is deliberate. On these machines the keyboard is a separate device with its own processor: the Fn brightness key is handled inside that firmware and never tells Windows anything. This was measured, not assumed - the key changes no EC byte, sends no report on any interface with SteelSeries GG both running and closed, and reading the controller's state returns nothing. Tellingly, SteelSeries' own software has no brightness control either, and no tool in the world implements one. The only way to try would be to send undocumented commands to the keyboard, and there is a documented case of exactly that permanently killing a laptop's backlight, which reflashing the BIOS did not repair. We are not willing to risk your keyboard for a feature your Fn key already performs perfectly. The full evidence is in LIGHTING.md.
What about colours, effects or RGB in general? Not supported, and it is a stated non-goal of the project. GhostDeck is a power, thermal and fan tool; RGB is a large, per-model, per-keyboard-generation problem with excellent dedicated software already available (SteelSeries GG or MSI Center on Windows, OpenRGB cross-platform). Setting colours on per-key keyboards is technically within reach - the protocol is confirmed on real hardware - so ideas like "keyboard colour follows the active profile" sit on the roadmap as a possible future extra. But it would always be opt-in, because writing colours replaces whatever effect your lighting software is running until you re-apply it.
Can it auto-clear RAM when I launch a game? No, and it's not planned. "Freeing" RAM (trimming working sets or the standby list) doesn't really help modern games: Windows already evicts cached pages on demand, and dumping the standby list can actually cause stutter as that data gets re-read. It's also outside what GhostDeck is - an EC power/fan controller, not a system/RAM tweaker.
Is there any risk of damaging my laptop? Very low. The app uses MSI's official WMI interface (the same channel MSI Center uses), writes only the exact register values MSI's own profiles use, and EC writes are volatile - a reboot resets the EC to firmware defaults (nothing is flashed). On an unrecognized firmware it stays read-only and writes nothing. The CPU also keeps its own hardware thermal protection that no EC write can disable. Experimental models are opt-in and write only documented mode registers.
My antivirus / VirusTotal flags GhostDeck.exe - is it malware? No - but the flag is understandable, and here is how to verify it yourself. GhostDeck ticks several boxes that antivirus heuristics dislike: it's a self-contained single-file exe (it self-extracts the .NET runtime), asks for administrator rights, talks to the Embedded Controller, registers global hotkeys and can update itself. Occasionally a single engine (typically a small one, via a generic "W32.Malware.*" heuristic name) flags it on VirusTotal while all the major engines stay clean - a classic false positive pattern.
Since v1.24.0 every release is digitally signed: right-click the exe → Properties → Digital Signatures should show "WYGODA DAWID FENIX INSPIRE" (the developer's registered business) with a valid timestamp. A correct signature proves the file is an untampered official build; signing also gradually builds SmartScreen reputation, so "unknown publisher" warnings fade over time. Releases before 1.24.0 were unsigned.
Additional checks: compare the SHA-256 with the asset on the Releases page (certutil -hashfile GhostDeck.exe SHA256 in a terminal) - every release is built from the public source by GitHub Actions, so the code that produced the exe is fully auditable, and you can always build it yourself (see the README). If a file claiming to be GhostDeck has no signature (v1.24.0+) or a majority of engines flag it, don't run it and tell us - that would not be our build.
Why does it ask for administrator (UAC)? EC access via WMI requires elevation. Launching manually shows one UAC prompt; the Start with Windows option uses an elevated scheduled task so there's no UAC nag at every logon.