Disassembly

I love that there are no plastic tabs or hidden screws anywhere here as it makes my job a lot easier. There are 13 hex 2.0 mm screws securing the bottom panel to the top panel from the underside. Once removed, the top panel is loose but still held in place by a screw in the top-right corner and a ribbon cable that needs to be removed from its connector in the PCB mounted to the top panel.


Once done, the top aluminum panel comes loose and we see that the PCB mounted here handles not just the media section but also the primary functionality of the keyboard itself. A Nuvoton NUC123SD4AN0 MCU powers the keyboard, using a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 core at up to 72 MHz and 36K/68K bytes flash program memory, 12K/20K bytes SRAM, and 4K bytes flash loader memory for In System Program (ISP). This is a lot of processing power for a keyboard without any programmability! Not shown here is the VIA Lab VL812-Q7 USB hub controller on the underside of the PCB. You can access it by removing the screws holding this PCB in place on the aluminum top panel, but do be warned that the volume knob is just glued in place and should not be pried out for any reason.


There are more screws holding the steel plate and plastic bottom panel - nine of them in total, including the one you already had to remove to get the top panel off, as seen in the picture of all the screws I removed. Once done, the second PCB can be seen. There's not much going on as far as the bottom panel goes, aside from the accompanying two magnets to hold the foot bar in place.


The second PCB contains the switches themselves, which are plate-mounted, and has a connection to the first PCB via a ribbon cable. As such, there is not much to see here, although solder quality could definitely be improved with some ugly spots seen, which are not detrimental to function, however. Both PCBs are multi-layered, 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 decided to go ahead and do so anyway.