Disassembly

For a wholly plastic construction, the CORSAIR K55 RGB PRO XT is one of the easiest keyboards to take apart. However, there is little reason to do so aside from morbid curiosity, I suppose. There are 13 Phillips-head screws, accessible through screws holes on the bottom. Once removed, you can pry the ABS plastic top panel piece off the rest of the keyboard, which has some guide points and interlocking tabs to keep it in place even without the screws. We see all the plungers are placed here, as part of a diffusing white plastic sheet that adds some structural integrity while helping with the backlighting on board.


The rubber domes for tactile feedback and the actual PCBs are all on the bottom case panel, with the keyboard portion of the membrane keyboard two flexible PCBs, which is akin to all other such membrane keyboards. Two ribbon cables that need to be removed connect these to the other, non-flexible PCB used for lighting and other CORSAIR-specific functions.


One final look at the flexible PCBs shows off the contacts that actuate the keystrokes when the switches are fully bottomed out—there is no other option here. The other PCB is black in color and houses all the LEDs, and can be removed from the bottom case by simply removing four more screws and dislodging the internal USB connector. At this point, we see further confirmation of the use of ABS plastic for the bottom panel, as well as the KG91OU internal naming scheme used throughout for the internal components.


We also see that this PCB design was finalized late last year, and it's mostly bare since there are no soldered switches. Solder quality is otherwise as good as with other CORSAIR keyboards, including for all the tantalum capacitors and contacts. Powering the keyboard is an NXP LPC11U68JBD100 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+/M0 Cores-based USB microcontroller with 256 KB on-board flash memory and 36 KB SRAM, which we saw used as recently as the CORSAIR K95 RGB Platinum XT that was their flagship keyboard until the K100 and AXON came along last year. All these components, including the 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.