Disassembly

Most metal frame/case keyboards are easier to disassemble than plastic case variants, but CORSAIR tries their best to discourage users from taking the K70 RGB TKL apart. Indeed, there is a sneakily hidden screw underneath a plastic cover next to the volume scroll wheel, and you then need to take off several keycaps as seen above to access the screws holding the keyboard together. 19 screws have to be removed, all of which are the same countersunk Phillips head in type, so a precision screwdriver comes in handy here. After you have, start at the bottom and carefully pry apart the aluminium frame and bottom plastic case to completely separate the two.


Given the detachable cable and Type-C port on the PCB itself, there are no internal USB cables to worry about here. We do see the cutouts in the ABS plastic case panel for the port, the feet on the other side, and the switch housing for Tournament Mode. There are actually multiple PCBs here, all of which are green in color. Daughter PCBs for all the additional keys, the backlit logo, and the volume wheel encoder connect to the primary PCB via ribbon cables. CORSAIR has also used a plastic support brace to hold the primary PCB in place, so further disassembly is not the easiest. General soldering quality is very good and likely machine-assembled as CORSAIR sells a lot of volume around the globe.


A reset button can be accessed via a hole on the back of the keyboard, underneath the keyboard feet. Powering the keyboard is an NXP LPC54605 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 USB microcontroller with up to 512 KB on-board flash memory and 200 KB SRAM. There is also an additional 8 MB discrete flash memory module to store all the pre-programmed functions. All the 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.