jkraghify

MOD UPDATE
 
The plastic looks good! Even better news, the plastic is flexible enough that I don't worry about these covers ever cracking or breaking. (FYI I used High impact styrene)

Also, I found out my file is a very tight fit for plastic (I may be overall maybe half a millimeter too small, but with a little force (and a lot of patience) the plastic was able to stretch the extra small distance to fit over the keyboard nicely.

I did not quite finish all my cuts because the cuts took quite a bit longer than I had expected.

I painted one of the plastic plates with a mirror paint to see what would happen and was a little disappointed with the results initially, but I noticed something cool that happens only with the mirror finish--lights reflect off the outer edges of the keys. Look for what I am talking about in the pictures below and tell me what you like: mirror or pure white!
 
Another piece of news: I have made this project open source. My layout files can be found here in this dropbox link.
 
Video of the mod:

 
[spoiler=Pure White Plastic VS Paper (Paper is on top)]

 

 


 
[spoiler=Pure White Plastic VS Mirror Plastic (Mirror is on bottom)]
 

 

 

Mod Update!
 

I refined the design for the white backdrop and experimented with some "mirror paint" designed for acrylic and glass, not paper.
 

 
It looks cool and I made a quick comparison video. My k95s are using the K95 RGB Audio Spectrograph by Elestriel.
 


 Below are the comparison pictures without the video processing
And there are more comparison photos in this imgur album.
 




 

Mod Update!
 
After 5 hours (probably more) of measuring and drafting the dimensions of the keyboard (I could not get them from Corsair) I managed to create a white base plate cover out of thick paper. Get ready for pictures!
 

 
I first drafted the keyboard in AutoCAD. This is an older draft that I am not using and it is not accurate to the spacing on the actual keyboard (I am not sure if I can actually share those or not). I made the draft; it was not provided by Corsair and it took way too much of my time to make. My current version of the draft is still a couple hundredths of a millimeter off, so I can't cut acrylic to fit over the keyboard yet.
 
 

 
I took the keyboard to the Mechanical Engineering labs this morning. I skipped class to reserve the laser cutter
It was a better use of my time anyways. Fluid Dynamics. Can't be too useful can it?
 

 
Laser cutting is super fun. Sorry for the bad quality, I had my camera on "Close up" preset because I was taking pictures of my room mate's gecko last night. I'll show you guys later. I got a really good picture of her
 

 
IT FITS!!! Well, sort of. It took a bit of force to get the right side around the numpad to stay on. I need to refine my measurements still *sigh* (I really wish Corsair would just give me a dimension drawing!)
 

 
After I got the whole thing on. the G keys are separate from the rest of the keyboard because I needed to check to see if I had aligned them correctly in my draft (I had no way to measure vertical displacement from the rest of the keyboard). I'm glad I separated the two parts because it turns out I was almost .6 mm too low! I will fix that for draft 2.
 
 
Now: Comparison Time!
 

 

 

 

 
Here's a small video comparison I made. I do not own a video camera so it is poor quality video.

 
 
 
Oh, and here's the gecko I was talking about earlier. She likes the camera.
 

Hey guys, I have owned my k95 rgb for half a year now and I love it, but I want to mod it. I am in the planning stages for the first mod, and I am going to share it with you guys.


[spoiler=Preliminary Teardown!]

I opened up the keyboard just to familiarize myself with how Corsair put it together. I did not mod anything yet.



Yes, that is two k95 keyboards. The one on the left is water-damaged and I have it to prototype all my mods. It also happens to work since I can repair these things (yay now I have an office keyboard everyone will be jealous of!)

First, I removed the keycaps. Pretty easy--we all can do that.



Next, I found and removed the 30 screws on the front face of the keyboard. There were two hidden screws--one under the corsair logo and one under the right volume roller guard.



Here is where I discovered that the aluminum plate has to be installed before the switches are soldered onto the PCB. This was a little disappointing because it means that if I want to paint the aluminum plate, then I have to de-solder every single switch. Not really that big of a deal though. If I really thought it was worth it, I could do it. I think there are better ways to change the color though.



Put it back together for the time being. I am thinking of doing a repair guide for this keyboard after I finish modding it, especially if I end up taking it apart again.




Mod 1: White Frame
I was thinking of painting the entire keyboard white (I have a black/white themed build); however, I took the keyboard apart and found that to get to the brushed aluminum sheet, I would have to de-solder ALL the switches... Not gunna happen (unless you guys REALLY want, these keyboards are expensive!)

I will instead laser cut a thin sheet of white acrylic to fit around the switches from the top. I need to get my hands on some calipers so I can properly design the acrylic sheet to fit around the switches. It will take me some time to measure and draft the cut paths.
 
THIS MOD IS COMPLETE. People have been posting pictures of their own version of this mod (I made my templates available on my Dropbox) on my Corsair User Forums Keyboard Cover Mod post.


Mod 2: Mirror paint inside keycaps
If the inside of the keycaps are mirror, the k95 could look a LOT brighter. If someone can give me a good idea on how to mask off the letters so the light still shines through the keys, that would be great. I tried using painter's tape, but it was incredibly difficult to get it down there. Maybe I need to use a couple toothpicks or something (please help me!)

Please help me brainstorm for more mods. I would like to mod this keyboard as far as I can without breaking it.

1TB SSD? Dayum son. And yea that laptop would be perfect for that kind of use.

Oh look, if you over-tighten your cooler you break shit. Anyone that flips out over this is a fucking idiot.

They used a power drill to install thier cooler. That's what happens when you over tighten this stuff

Yeah, that's why I said it's fine. I would add a 15$ GPU, but I have some friends with many emergency GPUs for cheap so I always throw them in anyways. Personal choice.

i do , but thanks for asking i have made this mistake before !

your motherboard also needs to support SLI
 
Just FYI (check your mobo specs)

Quite a few cheaters. I maybe run into one or two a day, but usually the ones I run into are good-humored and don't use thier cheats to make my experience bad. Usually they just spawn money for everyone or they spawn weird vehicles and take people on magic bus rides.
I think they actually add to the game rather than take away when they aren't jerks about hacking. GTA isn't competitive, and I like to mess around with my friends online. Going on a magic bus ride and shooting aliens with rail guns is on my list of fun things to do with friends
All that being said, it's easy enough to switch servers to evade a hacker if they are jerks.

Thank you. 4K =/= UHD
All these display manufacturers need to figure this out.
Sure they are close, but they are NOT the same thing.

no, "4k" means native resolution, which is different from UHD
do you get all you facts based on ambiguous information from wikipedia?
try goolging "4k vs uhd" and learn the difference
UHD is not 4k
 
 
or listen to linus' videos for a change, maybe you'll learn something other than "wikipedia says so, must be right"

ALL "4k" tvs and monitors are not 4k, they are UHD
Linus has talked about this dozens of times in the past, apparently some people just dont listen to his videos

nope
4k is 4096x2160 (1.9:1)
uhd is 3820x2160 (16:9)
its even stated in the link you posted, which you obviously did not read

Hey People! Sorry for the slow update - I pushed the PC to the backburner when I got back to school. Also I temporarily broke the LEDs during the move, but it was nothing that some solder couldn't fix!
 
(Full Imgur Album) (Battlesation Post on PCMR)
 
Behold:

 
 
Check out the laser etching! (hint, playing with the laser is my favorite part of the project)

 
 
 

 
 
 

I made my own modification of the rainmeter skin Simple Media. In order to get the clock to show up, you have to use Rainmeter. If you're unfamiliar with Rainmeter, it's a powerful desktop customization tool and I highly advise googling tutorials to learn the basics before trying to download things. It makes the desktop look way better (IMHO) and is fun to use!
 
 
Thanks! It's a small world. I have seen one other Cal Poly guy on here but I forgot his username...
 
I'll post a "move in" update soon. I'm not sure when the time will open up, but hopefully the first week of classes isn't too stressful.
 
I did get the LED's behind the monitor though! Posted this to my Facebook a couple nights ago.. The "Green theme"
 

wow it sounds REALLY bad...

Wait for Black Friday. You'll probably save around $100 (on mobile so I don't want to convert it). If you don't mind waiting, I'd say you should wait a little

It would beat or match a PS4. It might not be up to your hardware standards - it surely isn't up to mine - but it answers the proposed question without much research at all. I'm sure if you or I dug around a little more that we would find something better that atill fits the budget.
But that build would work.

Any posts in the Off Topic subforum don't count toward your posts. The only way a post in any other subforum doesn't count toward your post count is if a mod deletes it AFAIK.

Don't spam, just post when you feel like your response is needed or if it's a topic you feel like posting on. Don't worry about your member title

Quite a few cheaters. I maybe run into one or two a day, but usually the ones I run into are good-humored and don't use thier cheats to make my experience bad. Usually they just spawn money for everyone or they spawn weird vehicles and take people on magic bus rides.
I think they actually add to the game rather than take away when they aren't jerks about hacking. GTA isn't competitive, and I like to mess around with my friends online. Going on a magic bus ride and shooting aliens with rail guns is on my list of fun things to do with friends
All that being said, it's easy enough to switch servers to evade a hacker if they are jerks.

It means at different resolutions the monitor will have a different refresh rate.

Yet many people still believe it, unfortunately. Just watch the media go to shit on this topic when the next GTA comes out