Disassembly

Disassembly of the i-Rocks K71R involves a lot of screws, including four on the back underneath the rubber pads. I also removed the wheel cover—not necessary for disassembly—to show you the standard encoder underneath, which means enterprising modders can add their own custom covers if they wish to. You will also have to remove some keycaps to access the 15 other Phillips-head screws on the front.


There are no interlocking plastic tabs to worry about thankfully and the three-piece chassis comes apart enough to allow access to the two internal cables on the primary PCB. The smaller one on the left is for the battery and the other is for the USB connection, so dislodge both to fully separate the pieces. This also shows i-Rocks has added in a custom shaped foam sheet between the PCB and the bottom case panel to help dampen keystrokes and reduce reverberations in the otherwise empty space. There is a 3750 mAh battery inside which is about average for wireless mechanical keyboards of this size, although I would have liked to see something larger given the available space and the extra LEDs onboard for the side lighting too.


The PCB and steel plate are connected to the top panel via the soldered switches, meaning there is no hot-swap function here and now we really see the K71R showing its age. The PCB is blue in color and the solder quality itself is quite good. Powering the keyboard is an HFD2201KBA USB microcontroller, which appears to be a clone of the Sonix SN32F24xB and has been used in other keyboards. Helping confirm this is the use of a Sonix SLED1730 series hardware LED driver which is usually used in conjunction with a Sonix MCU too. Wireless connectivity comes via a Beken BK2425 2.4 GHz transceiver; there is no Bluetooth support here. We also see a plethora of RGB LEDs all around the sides of the PCB contribute to the side lighting with the light bar. 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.