Disassembly

Given the hot-swappable nature of the switches, it only made sense that I take one of the Gateron G Pro 3.0 Yellow switches apart. This is a 3-pin mechanical switch employing the Cherry MX stem design, so we have the usual construction with the top, crosspoint stem/slider, spring, and housing that also has the metal leaf for the actuation mechanism. What makes this newer version differ from the standard Gateron Yellow (Milky Yellow) is that the stem comes pre-lubed out of the factory, and tolerances for all the moving parts is supposedly tighter. The metal contacts are also supposedly thinly plated with gold, but clearly not to where it makes a difference visually. I did feel the lube slightly on my fingers, and this minimal lube application is the way to go with linear switches.


Disassembly of the keyboard itself is quite simple although note that there are two sets of screws and you really only need to remove one if all you are doing is following me. Remove specific keycaps to access all the screws and take off the eight longer ones screwed into brass threads placed in the bottom case. The other screws keep the plate/PCB assembly together and are only to be removed if you wish to replace/re-lube the stabilizers themselves. There is an internal cable going from the relatively-measly-for-2023 1900 mAh battery to the PCB itself. I would certainly have liked to see a 3000 mAh battery or larger! There is a foam sheet placed between the PCB and the case to minimize reverberations in use.


The PCB is black in color and solder quality is excellent throughout. It uses hot-swap switch sockets made by HaiMu, a relatively new switch manufacturer that's quickly rising from having debuted as an OEM for smaller keyboard brands. Powering the keyboard is the same Weltrend WT59F164 32-bit RISC-based USB microcontroller that was on the previous GK61 keyboard, complete with its 64 KB flash and 8 KB RAM. There are also three separate Shenzhen Sunmoon SM16159 LED drivers to run all the RGB LEDs on the keyboard. Wireless connectivity comes via a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52810 transceiver that supports 2.4 GHz as well as up to Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity! There is a silicone sheet between the plate and PCB and the O-rings also help support typing. All the components, including the switch sockets and SMD LEDs, are soldered to a multi-layered PCB.