Disassembly

Disassembly of the XPG Summoner is not trivial, as there are the two hidden screws on the back, underneath the top-left rubber pad and the right keyboard foot and 15 albeit fairly easily accessible countersunk Phillips-head screws below specific keycaps that have to be removed. With all these screws removed, you can easily lift off the top panel piece from the bottom plastic case panel.


There is now enough flex to access the internal USB cables connecting the PCB to the keyboard cable that provides two separate USB connections. This helps completely separate the two pieces, which confirms that ABS plastic is used for the case, as well as the magnets that hold the wrist rest together. The PCB has the switches soldered through the aluminium frame and is black to match the daughter PCB, which has the dedicated volume control via the button and wheel.


Solder quality is pretty good, although interestingly enough, there is Gateron printed on to the PCB even though the keyboard uses Cherry MX switches. I actually have a fairly good idea of which factory this keyboard was made in, but the market is such that most keyboards are made in a handful of factories and many share a common design anyway. Powering the keyboard is an NXP LPC11U35F 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 core USB microcontroller with up to 128 KB of onboard flash memory for pre-programmed functions, 12 KB of SRAM, and 4 kB EEPROM for system operation. There are also two separate Macroblock MBI5043GP LED drivers for the onboard lighting control. All components, including the switches, LEDs, and capacitors, are soldered to a multi-layered PCB.

Before we move on, be advised that disassembly may void the warranty and that TechPowerUp is not liable for any damages incurred if you decide to go ahead and do so anyway.