Disassembly

Disassembly is extremely simple and begins with the removal of the metal strip housing the logo on the top. It is held in place by a single hex 2.0 mm screw, and we see the underside is bare, which is absolutely fine. It also blocks access to two of the five Phillips head screws holding the plate/PCB piece with the case itself, so you do need to take it off to continue further.


Access to all five screws requires removal of certain specific keycaps as seen above. The screws are actually on the PCB itself, so there are holes cut into the steel plate through which they are placed. Once done, the top piece simply lifts upwards and away completely with no daughter PCB or internal cable to worry about. We see a plastic sheet between the PCB and aluminium case for electrical isolation—I would have rather seen a thin foam sheet for sound absorption while preventing shorting. We also see where a support was used to hold the case for the iridescent finish application, with a telltale area that does not have said finish. I do like that the finish is applied everywhere else, even where it wouldn't be visible at all, which is more of a side effect of the application process itself. I suspect some form of physical vapor deposition here, but it is a good-looking finish either way!


The switches are plate-mounted in that they are literally mounted on the steel plate and soldered through to the PCB underneath. The steel plate adds structural integrity to this well-built keyboard, and the PCB is black and of exceptional solder quality. As with most Ducky keyboards today, this is no doubt machine-assembled, with each switch having an associated SMD 3528 RGB LED. The PCB also has the Ducky logo to let you know that it was made in Taiwan, which is where Ducky is based out of.


We also get a better look at the four dip switches here, which we will discuss in more detail on the next page. Powering the keyboard is a Nuvoton NuMicro NUC123-series 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 core-based USB microcontroller with the core running at up to 72 MHz, with 68 KB on-board flash memory and 20 KB SRAM. There are also three separate Macroblock MBIA045GP LED drivers for the RGB lighting control. All components, including the onboard Type-C connector, mechanical switches, RGB 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.