Disassembly

The RK-9300 is one of the easiest keyboards to disassemble. There are multiple Phillips head screws that need to be removed from the back, and there are no hidden screws anywhere. Do that and the bottom panel comes loose following the prying out of the USB header cable. The PCB is black and all the components of interest are visible here, with the switches themselves soldered through the aluminum plate, of course. Solder quality is decent, but nothing special, with some solder peaks and plateaus, but they are spaced apart enough from each other to where it should not be an issue. Again, this is something that has clearly not affected the keyboard's performance before I disassembled it.


The USB header is a standard internal header that can accept a USB 2.0 signal for full performance should you be running short on USB 3.0 ports. Every single switch is labeled, has a blue LED, and the traces are well routed. The MCU used is relatively new in that there is not much information available online, but Rosewill did help and provided a spec sheet for it. The Vision VS11K01A is a USB-based controller that uses a modified Harvard architecture with multiple cores at 24 MHz and 8 KB of onboard flash memory with 512 bytes of SRAM storage. Rest assured that these specs are plenty enough for this keyboard, and I am seeing this same controller in use with other keyboards that have more complex lighting as well. The RK-9300 uses a single PCB with multiple layers as seen in the final picture above.

Before we take a look at the driver, 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.