Disassembly

Given the hot-swappable nature of the switches and this being my first time with these Alienware switches, it only made sense to take one of these apart. This is a linear switch with a stem which comes lubed well from the factory itself to where I don't expect to gain much from taking these apart for cleaning and re-lubing. The top has a dedicated lens to aid in lighting and everything seems to be built with extremely high tolerances to where I did not notice any switch wobble. The switch design is quite similar to other such Cherry MX-style switches in that the stem pushes the copper contacts in the bottom housing together to initiate switch actuation that is read by the microcontroller on the keyboard.


Disassembly of the keyboard is fairly simple with Alienware opting to go for screws to secure everything together. That said, this has to be a record of sorts with a total of 19 Phillips head screws on this 75% form factor keyboard that you need to remove after just taking off several keycaps as seen above. At this point I was expecting to find 2-3 internal cables going from daughter PCBs/battery in the bottom case panel to the primary PCB but once again Alienware pleasantly surprised me by having everything neatly assembled and already connected to the single large PCB itself. This includes the 4000 mAh battery—larger than average for this keyboard size—and also we see a customized foam sheet used between the PCB and the case to help dampen keystrokes and minimize any reverberations from occurring in the otherwise empty case.


At this point you can choose to remove all keycaps and switches to further separate the plate from the PCB itself, and this would allow you to also potentially replace and lube the stabilizers too. The PCB itself is white in color which contrasts well with the black, high-quality Kailh hot-swap switch sockets used here. Solder quality is excellent through; this is obviously a machine-assembled product. Connectivity comes in the form of a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth transceiver/SoC. There is a Fudan Microelectronics FM25Q04 512 KB flash memory module to help store the various pre-programmed functions as well as up to five user profiles too. There is also a dedicated Texas Instruments LP5860 hardware LED driver to ensure the RGB LEDs are not held back. All the components, including the switch sockets, SMD 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.