Disassembly

Disassembly of the i-Rocks K76M involves multiple stages and some hidden screws, but there are thankfully no plastic tabs to deal with here. There are screws with a Phillips head that need to be removed on the back, including one under the warranty void sticker, which will leave behind a sign of your activity and means that you should only disassemble this keyboard if you have no other option left. Once done, the top and side plates collectively come loose from the rest of the keyboard.


What we see here from the front is the stainless steel plate providing more structural integrity to the keyboard, and this has the PCB underneath with the switches soldered through the plate and into the PCB. There are four screws on the corners at the front, and two more under the certification label sticker on the back that keep this screwed into the bottom plastic case. Once removed, there is enough room to get your hand in to remove the keyboard cable by dislodging the internal connector.


The case is made out of ABS plastic, and it has cutouts to route the internal USB cable neatly, so remember to tuck it back in if it was loose as that will help when putting the keyboard back together. Taking a look at the other piece from the side, we get a better look at the brown color in these so-called Brown switches that have a white stem. The PCB is black in color, and solder quality is exceptional to the point where this is likely a machine-manufactured and assembled board.


Look closer, however, and there are some areas where i-Rocks can improve. Excess flux is a thing here, as is the discoloration around the screws used to originally hold the pieces together before soldering. There are tantalum capacitors near the USB connector, and powering the K76M illuminated keyboard is a microcontroller I do not recognize, nor was I able to identify it further. i-Rocks tells me that it is a MosArt MA80M191 LQFP64 package, which doesn't help much either. For the functionality built into this keyboard, there is not much it has to do as long as there is enough memory for the pre-programmed lighting and functions alike. We will test these on the next page to confirm regardless. As is the norm these days, the PCB is multi-layered.

Before we move on, 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.