Disassembly

Given the hot-swappable nature of the switches, it only made sense that I take one of these unbranded Yellow switches apart. This is a 3-pin mechanical switch employing the Cherry MX stem design, so we have the usual construction with the top, crosspoint stem/slider, spring, and housing that also has the metal leaf for the actuation mechanism. The stem comes pre-lubed out of the factory and everything reminds me of an older generation Gateron switch if I had to guess the OEM.


Disassembly of the keyboard is simple given the single piece case design. You need to remove some specific keycaps to gain access to eight Phillips head screws on the front. At this point, you can lift up the plate/PCB section off the case enough to gain access and remove the internal cable going from the battery glued in place on the case to the PCB itself. darkFlash is going for a relatively measly 1200 mAh battery here although it makes more sense once you realize there are no RGB LEDs here eating that battery life. This being a budget keyboard, we also don't see any sort of foam or silicone dampening sheet between the PCB and the case. There is plenty of room for enterprising modders to add one in to help dampen keystrokes and minimize reverberations in the otherwise empty case.


There is no daughter PCB here with the Type-C port directly soldered to the primary PCB which is the default green in color. All the components are neatly soldered in place, including the CIY hotswap sockets. The PCB feels more empty than usual due to the lack of any LEDs on board. Likewise, we don't have any special hardware drivers visible here except for the Beken BK2535 2.4 GHz SoC so don't expect much in the way of user customization or open-source firmware here. There is no dampening sheet between the plate and PCB either so that's another venue for mods in addition to lubing the stabilizers should you so be interested.

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.