Disassembly

Remember those angled rubber pads? They are angled to help install and remove them, as they hide a screw under each pad. This gives the GRAM XS a clean look bereft of screw heads from either side, and a Phillips screwdriver will help remove all six screws, which in turn will help remove the aluminum top cover off the rest of the keyboard. We can also see a plastic diffuser piece for the three indicator LEDs to pass light through and out this piece.


I expected the aluminum plate to also act as the plate for the switches to be installed through and on to the PCB, but Tesoro did surprise me here by having a second metal plate—out of steel in this case—doing that very thing. Indeed, the two metal plates together are why there was no flex to be seen here despite the ultra-slim profile of the keyboard. Six more screws hold the plate/PCB piece in the ABS plastic case, and these are accessed through the front as seen above. Tesoro has also added a sticky padding material all around where the plate meets the plastic case, so you will have to literally peel it off the case too. The use of this padding, as Tesoro puts it, is to reduce any sound coming from the spring bouncing (in the switches), as well as being a solution to prevent light leaks.


Once done, we can finally separate and remove the case, which does have a marking confirming it is made out of ABS plastic. The PCB is a matte black in color, and soldering is very well done here, although there is a general finish on the PCB that does not look very attractive. It does not have to be either as long as it was put together well, and so there are no complaints otherwise. Printed on the PCB is confirmation about TTC's involvement in the GRAM XS, and it also suggests that the PCB design was finalized in mid-December of 2017.


The power delivery section has the micro-USB port soldered on well, with some tantalum capacitors for company. Powering the keyboard is an NXP LPC11U24F 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller with up to 32 KB of onboard flash memory, 10 KB of SRAM, and 4 KB EEPROM. Tesoro has added a 512 KB dedicated flash memory module as well to help store the pre-programmed functionality beyond that of a standard USB keyboard, and here are also two dedicated Sonix SLED1734 LED drivers which can drive up to 256 separate LED lights or 75 RGB LED lights each. Given this is a full-size keyboard sporting 104 RGB LEDs, a minimum of two of these were needed, and two is what we have here. All components are on a multi-layered PCB, as is the norm these days.

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.