Disassembly

The Creative Vanguard K08 has a top and bottom panel piece, both screwed in separately with screws. Taking off the top panel requires the removal of some screws on the back, including some that are hidden underneath the rubber pads. Once done, it comes loose and we can examine the membrane switches that help actuate the media buttons. Also seen here is the steel plate that provides rigidity to the keyboard and through which the switches themselves are soldered to the PCB.


More screws are to be removed from the front to dislodge the bottom panel piece; there are twelve in total, which includes the first set. Disconnect the internal USB connector and the action end is all that remains. We now also get a good look at the front media buttons and wheel components on the PCB, and on the back are the rest of the components. Creative uses a black PCB with some really good soldering going on. Even those small solder peaks seen are rare and spaced far enough apart from each other.


Each PRE switch is soldered with double cross-points for redundancy and has an LED in the center of every backlit switch, as well as one for the logo in the media button section. No mere tantalum caps here either as Creative has gone with a solid polymer capacitor from the looks of it.


Powering the keyboard is an STMicroelectronics STM32F071R8 MCU, which is an ARM 32-bit Cortex USB controller based off the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture. It has up to 128 Kb of onboard flash memory and 16 Kb of SRAM. Alongside it is an Macronix MXIC 25L4006E 4 Mb flash memory module to help save macros and simple (static) lighting modes onboard. All of these lie on a multi-layered PCB as seen in the last picture above.

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.