Disassembly

You need to remove all the keycaps to disassemble the keyboard, which does not help, but is part of what provides the spill resistance here, so I understand it. Once done, there are ~19 screws spread across the top that need to be removed - all but one have Phillips heads, which exposes it and really seems out of place as it has a hex head instead. Once done, the aluminum top cover can be slid off, which will reveal a spring for some support to the cover over the numpad here.


The rest of the keyboard is disassembled top-down as well, and we see that the next layer is a plastic insulating sheet to keep the aluminum cover electrically isolated from the PCB underneath to prevent shorting issues. The indicator LED legends are also present on this plastic sheet. The PCB has traces on both sides and is held in place with the case panel piece via the keyboard cable that is glued in place on the internal USB connector. Despite the glue, the individual wires were exposed near the connector and strained at an angle, which is just asking for trouble without an easy means to fix it. I definitely recommend Bloody not implement a right-angled connector with glue on top to prevent potential issues since a drop during shipping can snap a wire off and result in a DOA keyboard.


You can unscrew the cable tie-down on the case panel to remove the latter off the PCB, which helps with a better look at it. It also has a semi-gloss finish as a result of an applied hydrophobic coating to further aid with spill resistance, and the lack of soldering on the switches results in a very clean PCB in general. The usual tantalum capacitors and RGB LEDs are soldered to the PCB, and powering the keyboard is a Sonix SN8F22E88B 8-bit MCU with 256 Kb of ROM and 8 Kb of RAM, along with a 6-channel PWM output. There are also two dedicated Sonix SLED1734 LED drivers, which can drive up to 256 separate LED lights or 75 RGB LED lights each. Given this is a full-size keyboard sporting 104 RGB LEDs, a minimum of two of these were needed, and two is what we have here. All components are on a multi-layer PCB, as is the norm these days.

Before we take a look at the driver, be advised that disassembly will void the warranty and that TechPowerUp is not liable for any damages incurred if you decide to go ahead and do so anyway.