Disassembly

Despite being a keyboard with a metal frame, the EVGA Z20 is one of the more involved to disassemble. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you should not disassemble it unless you absolutely need to, and if you do, follow my instructions over what these photos may suggest since I identified a potential issue too late during the disassembly myself. There are hidden screws under each of the five rubber pads on the bottom, and several more under keycaps at the top. This is where I recommend removing every single mechanical switch keycap since the switches themselves are not connected to the frame at all, with only the keycaps keeping the ensemble together. Once done, carefully raise the frame from the bottom until you feel the media buttons produce resistance, and it is here where I realized that the daughter PCB for the volume and media controls has a plastic stabilizer base that goes through the main PCB to ensure good travel and resistance with the shorter keycaps. I noticed that these were slightly wobbly as well, and disassembly without knowing this caused the plastic contacts to break off, rendering the user experience with these switches less than satisfactory henceforth. To completely separate the main PCB from the bottom case panel, disconnect the two internal USB cables seen above.


We now get a better look at the bottom case panel, which has multiple daughter PCBs for the various pass-through functions as well as the volume and media controls. There is also a steel plate in the center, which presumably is to help with weight balancing. The primary PCB can be completely separated from the metal frame if you remove all the keycaps, with the switches soldered directly onto the matte black PCB.


If there was ever any doubt on the switch manufacturer, this step will nullify it. These are the same sort of Light Strike LK switches as on Bloody Gaming keyboards we saw before, although I would have liked EVGA to go with their screw-type stabilizers over the current unimpressive offering. Solder quality is excellent throughout, and it is a fairly crowded PCB, too. Powering the keyboard is an NXP LPC5516 32-bit Arm Cortex®-M33 USB microcontroller with up to 256 KB flash memory, 96 KB SRAM, and a whole bunch of other features in this very new, very powerful MCU that allows for the Z20 to run at a native 4000 Hz polling rate as opposed to the standard maximum of 1000 Hz. Then there is one more daughter PCB, this time for the TOF sensor itself. Sadly, there is not much information to glean here, though we do see that the sensor is angle ~45° upwards to directly face the user. As is the norm these days, the PCB has multiple layers.

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.