GIGABYTE Launches Force K3 Gaming Keyboard

[btarunr]

GIGABYTE, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, is pleased to announce a new standard gaming keyboard - Force K3, a gaming keyboard with professional features and friendly price. Back to the end of 2010, GIGABYTE had just released the first gaming keystroke keyboard Aivia K8100 Macro Gaming Keyboard, the Red Dot design award winner, and received good reviews from all around the world. To continue fulfilling gamers' needs, GIGABYTE is launching Force K3 Gaming Keyboard, which features enlarged elastic rubber dome, one-piece rubber membrane design, enhanced frame structure, water-resistant functionality, and shock-resistant design.



Enlarged Elastic Rubber Dome
To satisfy each gamer's desire of a perfect gaming keyboard, Force K3 features enlarged elastic rubber domes under the keycaps to deliver gamers' commands more accurately. The larger rubber domes not only ensure faster and more reliable keystroke response in a game play, but also guarantee durable performance. The keys on Force K3 are designed dedicated to gamers and can withstand up to 10 million times hits.

One-piece Rubber Design
With one-piece rubber membrane design, ForceK3 is more stable and durable. It can avoid misaligned problem of elastic rubber domes when accidentally dropping occurs.

Enhanced Frame Structure
Different from other standard keyboards in the market, Force K3 adopts a 4-layer structure including an extra chassis in the middle. Whit the extra chassis, the rubber sheet can be firmly attached to the bottom of keyboard. Force K3 frame-enhanced structure design guarantees durable performance that improves drop resistance.

Shock-resistant Design
Considering gamers may have intense battles, it is particularly important to keep the keyboard being stably on the table. Therefore, GIGABYTE increases the weight of Force K3 to 900g to prevent unnecessary movement while gaming.

Water-resistant Functionality
GIGABYTE understands that when gamers are devoting themselves in gaming, it is possible that food and drinks on the table would sometimes cause damages to keyboard. FoceK3 features a necessary design, water resistant functionality, to protect keyboard from spilling of drinks.

For more information, visit the product page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Fourstaff]

Or just get a cheap Logitech.

 

[Fx]

not too bad. it looks like they are taking steps in the right direction. wonder why in the world they would still design a kb with the windows key on the left hand side. thats just stupid

I am glad they didnt follow suite with many of the other recent designs like Razer and place all of those macro keys on the left side of the keyboard just inviting your left hand to get lost during a critical moment while gaming

 

[_JP_]

Or just get a cheap Logitech.

That's what I did, lol, PS/2 FTW!

 

[DanishDevil]

The words gaming, keyboard, and rubber-dome should never be included in the same sentence in a PR release. End of story. Get with the program and put Cherry Blacks in it, and true gamers might actually consider buying your keyboards.

 

[BrooksyX]

Just looks a standard keyboard to me. but then again I game with a $7 logitech keyboard.

 

[Hayder_Master]

Please gigabyte, need something like K8000

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

Pretty bland looking, wonder what pricing will be.

 

[MilkyWay]

The words gaming, keyboard, and rubber-dome should never be included in the same sentence in a PR release. End of story. Get with the program and put Cherry Blacks in it, and true gamers might actually consider buying your keyboards.

Exactly these cheap keyboards do not excite me, there are plenty on the market already.
I hope the popularity of the mechanical keyboards increases as i do like my Zowie.

EDIT: Imo all keyboards should have a disable windows key function.

 

[Vancha]

Why would I want to buy this keyboard?

Cons - Ugly WASD lettering and arrow keys

Pros - ?

I'm confused, Gigabyte.

Also, the product page link takes me to the ECO600 mouse. Anyone else?

 

[Fx]

The words gaming, keyboard, and rubber-dome should never be included in the same sentence in a PR release. End of story. Get with the program and put Cherry Blacks in it, and true gamers might actually consider buying your keyboards.

I completely agree. it seems like they are focusing on price before function

 

[Jetster]

$20 MS Comfort Curve

 

[digibucc]

full size gaming keyboards are imo not the answer. unless you are an mmo god and need 80 keys, an actual gaming keyboard is the best imo.

logitech g13
n52te
wolfking

etc.

 

[Fourstaff]

full size gaming keyboards are imo not the answer. unless you are an mmo god and need 80 keys, an actual gaming keyboard is the best imo.

logitech g13
n52te
wolfking

etc.

You can add strategy games like Starcraft there, I use my full keyboard for hotkeys etc. After playing around with Wolfking a bit, I found out that full keyboards always give the best response in strategy games, I cannot say anything about shooters or other games though.

 

[digibucc]

You can add strategy games like Starcraft there, I use my full keyboard for hotkeys etc. After playing around with Wolfking a bit, I found out that full keyboards always give the best response in strategy games, I cannot say anything about shooters or other games though.

the wolf-king is the odd one out as it's not programmable, and doesn't have a switch for profiles. the other two lets you switch between profiles (double/tripling keys), and program keys however you want.

I do find it much better than my full size board. response time is no different that i see and the ergonomics and ease of finding keys is just better imo.

that said, to each their own - and strat games certainly fit the bill for needing many keys

 

[Fx]

You can add strategy games like Starcraft there, I use my full keyboard for hotkeys etc. After playing around with Wolfking a bit, I found out that full keyboards always give the best response in strategy games, I cannot say anything about shooters or other games though.

I wholeheartedly agree. I just returned a Filco tenkeyless because I kept reaching for the numpad and quickly found out how much I missed a full keyboard

 

[newconroer]

You can add strategy games like Starcraft there, I use my full keyboard for hotkeys etc. After playing around with Wolfking a bit, I found out that full keyboards always give the best response in strategy games, I cannot say anything about shooters or other games though.

Any game will suffer the same drawbacks when using a full sized single piece keyboard - doesn't matter the genre.

If you are implying that a standard keyboard provides more buttons, and therefore more useful for RTS which have more functions, then you'd be overlooking the other half of the keyboard pad equation, which is a multi button mouse.

An Ideazon Fang or Wolfclaw for example has about forty buttons(not to mention laid out for quicker response and ease of use), which in conjunction with prerequisite buttons such as SHIFT, ALT, CTRL can multiply. A simple two side button mouse like a Deathadder would give you the option of taking your forty button keypad, and making it one hundred twenty buttons effectively. And let's not even bring the Razer Naga into the equation...that thing can run an RTS all on it's own.

You could always do this with a standard keyboard, but you still have the same problem....cramped keys, weird layouts, and etc.

I would have thought any serious gamer, no matter the genre, would have learned to use a stand alone key pad as soon as they starting showing up.
In turn rendering a normal keyboard as nothing more than a typing station.

It's a shame more people do not catch on, then at least more keypads would populate the market instead of over priced and unnecessary gimmicky 'gaming keyboards' which are just fancy colors, a few added buttons and some slight layout adjustments.

A keypad is like another peripheral that does it's job 100% without compromise. In the end a keyboard still has to have the main embodiment remain the same, which is the typing.

 

[Super XP]

Gigabyte should stick to what they are good at. IMO nothing beats the Logitech G15 Keyboard with the LCD screen.

 

[Fourstaff]

If you are implying that a standard keyboard provides more buttons, and therefore more useful for RTS which have more functions, then you'd be overlooking the other half of the keyboard pad equation, which is a multi button mouse..

No, I am not implying that standard keyboard provides more buttons, its just more "natural" to play on a full keyboard. Most Starcraft 2 gamers also use 2 button mice (one of them, DongRaeGu even stole his from a cybercafe), mouse precision is far more important than silly multibutton gimmicks FPS and MMO gamers like. The average 200+APM per game does not allow massive number of errors which comes with needing to click multiple buttons.

It all boils down to individual preference, and I have not seen any progamers in Starcraft 2 community using fancy non-standard layout keyboards, after a year of religiously following the scene. The real reason escapes me, but I still like my keyboard because I know where all the keys are, and if my keyboard dies halfway through a competition (happened a few times over the year, usually once every league tourney), its easily replaceable. Get used to a gamepad, break it fast (non mechanical keyboards gets completely worn off in about a few months) and then fail to use a normal keyboard.

Edit: oh, quite a few Starcraft 2 progamers are quite good pianists, and as an average pianist I can say that hitting over 300 notes per minute is effortless. (take, for example, Minute Waltz which calls for about 420 notes per minute, that is certainly doable for quite a lot of practised pianists). You will not be hitting those note consecutively though, most of the time you will have 1 on your left hand and 1-2 on your right at the same time, giving you about 100 apm per finger. Adding a pedal to reduce the range of that to 44 keys doubled over is going to cause a lot of wasted time trying coordinate your foot and hand.

 

[micropage7]

new keyboard but they fail to offer something new
for gaming keyboard its not different that generic keyboard

 

[newconroer]

No, I am not implying that standard keyboard provides more buttons, its just more "natural" to play on a full keyboard. Most Starcraft 2 gamers also use 2 button mice (one of them, DongRaeGu even stole his from a cybercafe), mouse precision is far more important than silly multibutton gimmicks FPS and MMO gamers like. The average 200+APM per game does not allow massive number of errors which comes with needing to click multiple buttons.

It all boils down to individual preference, and I have not seen any progamers in Starcraft 2 community using fancy non-standard layout keyboards, after a year of religiously following the scene. The real reason escapes me, but I still like my keyboard because I know where all the keys are, and if my keyboard dies halfway through a competition (happened a few times over the year, usually once every league tourney), its easily replaceable. Get used to a gamepad, break it fast (non mechanical keyboards gets completely worn off in about a few months) and then fail to use a normal keyboard.

Edit: oh, quite a few Starcraft 2 progamers are quite good pianists, and as an average pianist I can say that hitting over 300 notes per minute is effortless. (take, for example, Minute Waltz which calls for about 420 notes per minute, that is certainly doable for quite a lot of practised pianists). You will not be hitting those note consecutively though, most of the time you will have 1 on your left hand and 1-2 on your right at the same time, giving you about 100 apm per finger. Adding a pedal to reduce the range of that to 44 keys doubled over is going to cause a lot of wasted time trying coordinate your foot and hand.

When you look at the number of keypads on the market, there's not many left and there was never many designed. People don't like to learn new peripherals and they aren't designed by big names like Razer, so they get stomped out of the market.
You could even say people do not like a third peripheral to fit on their desk, or it's another piece they have to lug around to LAN events and such.

I can promise you that whatever the genre, if any serious gamer sat down with a Ideazon Fang for a month, it would not only benefit them, but also bring a new level of comfort to their gaming due to layouts creating less cramping and being ambidextrous(most of them at least).

Not sure where the APM arguement leads... a keypad simply replaces the keys on a keyboard. You still do all the usual things you would with a keyboard, whether your combining mouse buttons or not.

new keyboard but they fail to offer something new
for gaming keyboard its not different that generic keyboard

Gaming keyboard is just a fluffed up keyboard. Of course nothing new will be added, there all still keyboards. Their built around the central section which is for the purpose of typing.


The closest I've seen is Ideazon did a combination kit, like their MERC board where you got essentially the fang keypad built onto the side of the keyboard. So instead of two peripherals, it was one. I don't find it as effective but it was at least a step away from the gimmicks and more towards something more useful.

Attached is example of the FANG.

 

[digibucc]

great post, it belongs in my thread: why are gaming keypad/boards so underrated?

though i prefer my g13, i have never used the FANG so i can't compare them, though the sentiment is the same.

 

[F1reFly]

I got a Stealth Merc as well as G13. far more comfortable to use than one that looks like any other kb out there.