Disassembly

The GAMDIAS HERMES M5 is one of the simplest keyboards to take apart, which is always a good thing for me at least. 12 Phillips head screws keep the keyboard together, and these can be accessed by removing specific keycaps as seen above. A precision Phillips screwdriver comes in handy here, and after removing them, you can lift the metal frame piece off the bottom plastic panel. That said, don't yank it off since an internal USB cable connects the two.


Dislodge the cable and you may now fully separate the two primary pieces. We see the use of a white ABS plastic bottom panel that has the keyboard cable going through it and onto the PCB itself. Speaking of which, GAMDIAS is using a shiny green PCB with at best adequate solder quality. Everything is completely fine functionally, though, so there are no points to be docked here. Powering the keyboard is a BYK901 USB microcontroller, which I can find no useful documentation for online, but it has been used in budget keyboards successfully enough before. GAMDIAS says this is a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 MCU, but pretty much every one used in a mechanical keyboard today tends to be. It may limit some of the customization possibilities with the HERMES M5, so let's check if that is the case on the next page. All the components, including the switches, 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.