Disassembly

Given the hot-swappable nature of the switches and this being my first time with these switches, it only made sense to take one of the Cloud switches apart. This is a linear switch that Royal Kludge says is of "high quality" and "designed for gamers," although obviously this is just a linear switch and a safe switch for gaming in that regard. We do not know the material composition of these parts, although it does feel to be a smoother and more stable switch compared to the usual OEM offering we see on keyboards. It features a pre-lubed stem and spring too, which is again less common, but otherwise the switch design is otherwise similar to equivalent Cherry MX-style switches in that the stem pushes the copper contacts in the bottom housing together to initiate switch actuation.


Disassembly of the keyboard itself is simple enough, although not recommended since the two pieces of the ABS plastic case are put together using interlocking plastic tabs that you need to carefully pry apart, and even so there may well be tell-tale marks or worse. You will also have to pull off the knob cover to remove the top panel enough to access the internal cable going from the primary PCB to the daughter board that holds the encoder wheel and the display. There is now enough room to lift the plate/PCB section off from the bottom panel to access the second internal cable, this time coming from the batteries placed in the panel. Yes, there are two 3600 mAh batteries used in the S85 TKL for a total capacity of 7200 mAh—very generous of Royal Kludge! A shaped silicone sheet placed between the PCB and the bottom panel helps dampen keystrokes and minimizes reverberations. This is complemented by a foam sheet that comes taped to the PCB itself, similar to a tape mod but more annoying for disassembly, which can be carefully peeled off. Royal Kludge is using a proper implementation of the gasket mount here, with silicone gaskets placed on eight sections of the PCB. I do wish there were some on the side too, but this is miles beyond the cheap, thin foam we've seen used recently with some keyboards and actually supports your keystrokes properly.


The primary PCB is white and has a cutout in the corner to accommodate the daughter board with the LCD screen and the knob. It is assembled really cleanly, although I wish we saw something more reliable than the Jerrzi hot-swap sockets which have had some reports of random failures over time, however rare they may be. Perhaps this is also the OEM for the switches used on the keyboard. Powering the keyboard is a BYK961 USB microcontroller. There isn't any useful information about this online except from another vendor of another keyboard mentioning it supports some RGB lighting effects. It's the exact same chip used in the Royal Kludge RK84 from a few years ago too, so that's not great if you wanted something new. I was unable to identify the other hardware drivers used, with presumably one handling the 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth 5.0 support. All the components, including the switch sockets and SMD LEDs, 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.