Modding the G710 | New Switches and Paint Job

[seon123]

Introduction and Parts Selection

 

Everyone has seen the Logitech G710. It's a large, high profile, mostly grey, mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches, some macro keys and media controls. The case is all plastic, with a metal mounting plate. Overall, it's fairly sturdy, with little to no flex. Here is a picture of the keyboard:

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It looks decent, but not great. Especially that blue part around the macro keys stands out, but not in a good way. Glossy plastic is as bad as ever; fingerprints and oils everywhere. The mounting plate is black. Newer keyboards often have white plates, which makes for much more, and more even underglow. 

And the MX Blue switches are tactile for Cherry switches, but you can get far more tactile switches. And the sound is not that great, compared to some other switches. 

 

This is where the mod comes in. Painting the mounting plate white is obvious. And because the rest of my room is white, I also wanted to paint the keyboard white. For switches, I went with the Kailh/Novelkeys BOX Jade switches. These are relatively new switches made by Kailh. 

 

They are compatible with Cherry MX keycaps, plates and pins. There are, however, some major differences. 

They have a box around the stem, and around the contact point. This makes them rated IP56 and for 80 million key presses. This is compared to the Cherry MX, whish is rated IP40 and for 50 million key presses. 

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Kailh BOX White switch, with the box around the tactile leaf with contact point. 

https://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/Keyboard-switch/p/sm/1160932781.htm#1160932781

Cherry MX Silent Red

https://sketchfab.com/models/b6de8e03f5cf4879963faeaebf33c607

The clicky switches also have another difference: the tactility and sound comes from a click bar, instead of a click jacket. 

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Click bar (torsion spring) on the BOX White. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s6MFolvnwk

Cherry MX Blue mechanism, with the click jacket. 

https://www.cherrymx.de/en/products/mx-blue.html

This makes the sound and tactility much sharper, and it produces a click on both the upstroke and the downstroke. On Cherry MX switches, the sound is a bit more rattly, and it produces a clicky sound only on the downstroke. The tactile feedback is also less defined. 

On the normal BOX White, the click bar is 0,25mm thick. On the BOX Jade, the click bar is 0,30mm thick. This makes the switch much more tactile, and the sound deeper. This is the switch I chose to replace the MX Blues on my G710 with. 

 

Due to the BOX switches being enclosed, they don't support the 3mm through hole LEDs on my G710. They officially only support SMD LEDs. However, the LED can also fit inside the switch. For the linear and tactile switches, this can be 1,8mm or 2x3x4mm through hole LEDs. The clickly switches only support 1,8mm through hole LEDs, due to the click bar. I therefore chose 1,8mm LEDs for my project. 

 

Due to tax reasons, I went for 68 BOX Jade switches, and 50 Gateron Green switches. Green switches use a heavier spring than the Blues, but are otherwise identical. The Gaterons are Cherry MX clones, but are often considered to be better than the Cherrys. They are also transparent, so I can mount the LEDs inside the switches. This means that the lighting will be more even, than if I had mounted the LEDs on top of the Gaterons, but inside the BOX switches. 

 

 

The Mod Itself

 

Disassembly

 

The first step is obviously removing the keycaps. 

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The case of the G710 is held together with plastic clips and 14 philips head screws, all on the underside, and none of them are hidden. The volume control is still attached to the top part of the case, and with a cable to the main PCB. The PCB is connected to two additional cables, and the plate is connected to a grounding point. 

Now, I can start disconnecting the cables, and removing the PCB and mounting plate from the case. Again, screws. 

Spoiler

I'm painting the top part of the case, so I'm also disassembling that. There are a bunch of plastic tabs and melted plastic rivets. The tabs are enough to hold it together, so just cut the plastic rivets with a box cutter knife. After doing that, it comes apart into 3 pieces. The metal logo is held in with two screws. 

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Desoldering

 

Each switch has two electrical pins. Each LED also has two pins. The keyboard has the 105 ISO keys + 6 programmable keys. This means it's 444 points to desolder, and later solder. 

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Desoldering was done using a soldering iron and solder wick. The wick was placed on the solder joint. Then the iron was placed on the soldering wick for a few seconds. The solder was sucked into the wick. Surprisingly easy.

After desoldering those, I can remove the switches and LEDs from the mounting plate. (the fan is a molex powered fan, connected to a "1200W" PSU)

The stabilisers were also removed. They are held in with clips, which just have to be pushed in.

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Painting

 

I hadn't done this before, so I just chose some cheap matte white paint and primer. 

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First, I sanded all of the parts. Then, I applied a few coats of primer, and then some coats of white paint. (I didn't take pictures of the process.) Finding spray painting tutorials should be fairly easy. 

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While I was doing this, I had soaked the keycaps in soapy water. 

 

Soldering and Reassembly

 

Now it's time to solder in the new key switches. This is how I laid out the switches:

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Through hole soldering is really easy. Heat up the pin and the ring on the PCB for a few seconds, feed in a little bit of solder.

The stabilisers were inserted into the plate before soldering. 

The LEDs have to go in first. Make sure to have the polarity correct, as LEDs are diodes. This is marked on the PCB, and the longer pin is the cathode (positive, +). I soldered in the LEDs in the corners, and then the switches in the corners (the G1, G6, numpad Enter and numpad minus). While doing so, an extra pair of hands was used in order to hold the plate together with the PCB. The extra length of the pins was cut off with a pair of metal cutting things. 

Spoiler

After doing so, the rest of the LEDs were soldered on. The switches were mounted to the plate, but not soldered on. This was to ensure the LEDs fit. 

Once all of the switches were in the plate, they were soldered on. 

The Spoiler

I really like the above picture

 

The reassembly was fairly simple... Undo the steps from the disassembly. I ended up with a screw left over... oops

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Result

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In comparison, here's the mounting plate when it's black. 

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Conclusion

 

All together, this project took me four days. I did one step per day, from Friday to Monday. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. It looks decent, and the switches are much nicer to type on. The glow from the white mounting plate looks really nice, and the white colour makes it a bit more special than the standard black/gray/blue G710. The switches are fun to type on, and the MX Blues feel almost linear in comparison. I went from ~80 to ~90 WPM on Typeracer, which is nice (but still not that good). The sound is also different, and nicer. 

 

Due to never having spray painted before, the main issues lie with that. The plate turned out perfect, as it's just a flat piece. The blue plastic part around the macro keys, and the glossy black part around the main keys turned out fine. They are also mostly flat. 

The big grey part of the case, however... I decided to mask the thing in several places, due to concerns about the parts fitting together. I didn't do a good job, so where I masked has these ridges on them. In retrospect, I probably didn't need to mask them, so I should just have left them and painted. 

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Also, I have noticed LEDs on some of the keys have warmer tones than the rest. This is most noticeable on the Scroll Lock key. I didn't realise this until I had reassembled it and put it on my table, but you can clearly see it in some earlier pictures. 

Spoiler

 

 

Typing Tests

With Cherry MX Blues

With Kailh BOX Jades. The space bar makes a much louder sound, that's not just the camera. 

 

 

All of the pictures and videos were taken using my Oneplus 3. 

Edited October 21, 2018 by colonel_mortis
Fix spoiler issue

[Ya_Mi]

Nice color, I prefer that color scheme than boring blue logitech theme.

It looks like a gundam

 

 

[r2724r16]

Nice, I might do this to my own G710+

[seon123]

34 minutes ago, r2724r16 said:

Nice, I might do this to my own G710+

Cool. Hope you do it, and that it turns out nice.