GK61 GK61x RGB Hot Swap Independent Driver Tyce-C ANSI Mechanical Keyboard DIY kit Plastic Case CNC Aluminum Case Plate…

First the positives- Hefty CNC aluminum case, good quality anodizing-“Pok3r” – style layout means it’s compatible with most aftermarket keycaps-hot swap sockets are fantasticNegatives- the aluminum plate doesn’t match the case at all. The color is closer to silver than gray, and the brushed finish jars with the satin finish of the case- due to the PCB dimensions, it’s impossible to get it centered in the case without sanding down one side of the PCB. Sanding PCB is dangerous, as it creates highly toxic plastic dust.-stock typing sound is pretty abysmal. This can be improved by installing a layer of .125″ thick, 50 duro sorbothane in the gab between the case and the PCB.- the function key can’t be remapped, and the software is very difficult to decipher-the stabilizers are almost unusable without lube. I recommend switch top super lube

I purchased the wired black case option. I am typing on it as I write this review and I currently have it set up with Zealios V1 65g and DSA profile caps. This is a cheap and convenient hotswap option if you want to test out switches and don’t care to much about customizability. There are many solid upsides to this board, but it also has its share of flaws.The good:- The overall build of the board is great for the price. The white-painted steel plate has a bit of heft to it, and gives the board a fairly sturdy feel. The paint job does a good job of eliminating any metallic resonance, i.e. there is no ping at bottom out or release. The plate is aligned to the PCB with locating posts and fastened in place with 6 washer head screws. The plate/PCB assembly is in turn aligned to the case on the screw posts which go through holes in the PCB. The tolerances are quite good and everything fits together nice and snug. It comes with standard plate mount stabilizers which are nothing special but I tore mine down and lubed them and they are fine for me. The case has a pretty low angle which works well for my uniform DSA profile keycaps, and I actually prefer flatter boards from typing on laptops most of the time. It also comes with a decent braided USB-c cable which is a nice touch.- The PCB has some pretty nice features. The RGB LEDs are per-switch and are recessed into the board. There are holes for 5-pin (PCB mount) switches, but 3-pin switches work just fine here since the plate is fastened to the PCB – alignment and stability won’t be an issue. This PCB uses good quality Kailh hotswap sockets. They are easy to use, but it is recommended to remove the PCB from the case and hold flat on a table when installing switches to avoid putting load on the sockets which could break the soldered connections. I don’t use RGB so I can’t really comment further on the quality or quantity of the lighting options.The bad:- The PCB has a built-in microphone under the spacebar, which is just sort of off-putting to me. I can’t think of any good reason for this other than invasion of privacy. Not sure if removing it and shorting the connecting points would cause a trip in the controller but it may be possible to mod it out.- My research indicates the PCB/plate are not completely compatible with standard 60% mounting points and are too big for most standard 60% cases. In other words, you are stuck with the case you get unless you modify another case or purchase a case designed around this board (I think epathbuy has some).- The driver software experience from top to bottom is absolutely awful, and it is the main reason I deducted 2 stars from this otherwise pretty decent board. First, it is very difficult to find a working copy of the software online (the seller’s link never worked for me). I finally tracked down a copy of the software from some other overseas listing (might have been a seller on Aliexpress?). It comes as an executable file and who knows what other stuff is embedded in that thing. It installs an app that you can use to customize the layout and lighting of the board. I am a Mac user so I like to change around the order of the modifier keys. I also wanted to put arrow keys under my WASD keys using the Fn modifier. I am still trying to figure out how to do this, as the factory settings have other controls under these keys and I’m still trying to figure out how to get it sorted out.Overall, I give it 3 stars. I consider it a cheap and convenient platform for testing out different switches. It has a great quality build which really impressed me, but the lack of compatibility with standard 60% hardware and the absolute dumpster fire of a software application, making customization very difficult, make this board difficult to recommend as a daily driver.EDIT: I managed to figure out the driver software, reconfigured the board *mostly* to my preference, and I have some additional thoughts. First and foremost, the Fn key cannot be changed. To the seller’s credit this is stated up front and I have no real issue with this. My biggest complaint is that the Fn layer cannot be reconfigured at all – you are stuck with the factory presets here. There is a factory preset standard layer and three customizable layers which you can toggle between using Fn+Q/W/E/R. I use custom layer 1 as my main layout. I then have my arrow keys, home/end, and the F keys on custom layer 2. To use those I either have to toggle to that layer with Fn+E, or you can set ANOTHER key to be a layer shift (I used right ctrl). In other words I hold rctrl and press 1 for F1. It’s a pretty clunky setup but it works. I just wish I could use the Fn key for this like I can on my TADA68. The custom layers have weird LED presets configured, but you can change them in the software. However if you turn off the LED’s, they automatically turn back on every time you switch layers which is super annoying. So in order to avoid the LEDs turning back on when I didn’t want them, I had to just completely disable them for both customer layers I am using, which bums me out a little, since I sometimes use solid white lighting. Either way, this just confirms my earlier impression that the software is the most troublesome part of this keyboard, and I am keeping my 3 star rating.

This is a decent keyboard once it is put together. If this is one of your first kits, a few things to know.1) It has the Kailh Hot Swap sockets, so no soldering needed.2) It uses a case with tiny ledges for the PCB and only 2 screw slots on the the left and right sides.3) The aluminum case is nice and solid, but the plate has no mounting points and uses the switches to hold it in. This means all of the internals are only held in with two screws. Be very careful with it!4) Because of the above, the top row of the plate kept dropping further down into the case as I started to add switches. I started with ones in the each corner and worked around, but it did not help. I used an iFixit pry tool to lift up the plate as I inserted the switch into the pcb, and that worked to keep everything level, until the switches were installed.5) The PCB has many screw holes, so this seems to be a limitation of the case itself.6) The stabilizers included are the plate mount style, so clip in, with the bar under the plate.7) It ships from overseas, so took 5 days with $15 DHL Shipping. Looks like it would take a month or more with standard.8) You need the 5.1.0.6 version of the GK6XPlus driver software or higher. I have the 5.0.1.0 version for my GK64 and it wouldn’t recognize this board. The quick lighting settings in the software for this keyboard were blurred on this one, but available on my GK64. So you can’t access the full lighting menus for some reason. I turned the lights off based on my keycap set.9) With a piece of thin sound mat under the pcb, lubed/bandaid modded stabs, and a good set of PBT keycaps; this thing sounds amazing and well worth the $80 price and wait.

First off, as others have said, the software is garbage. It is pretty odd and difficult to navigate. Figuring out the lighting is pretty strange, difficult to explain. Half of the software seems to be in Chinese. It seems it could be really good software if a decent instruction manual or how to video was released, or if they made it QMK compatible.Word of advice when buying switches. Look for cherry mx style switches that have a large enough hole for the LEDs to shine through. I found that all of my white bottom style switches had a large enough hole, where as the black bottom switches all had tiny pinholes which left very little light able to shine through to the keys.Build Quality: Not to bad at all. I have seen people complain about the stabilizers, in my book they are fair to good. They don’t rattle on my keyboard. The case and components are pretty beefy and shouldn’t slide around on your desk. One thing I did notice is that even after I took the screws out I couldn’t get the plate and board out of the case, could be user error on my part.The build was as simple as putting in the switches and installing the key caps, no need for soldering.This is my second mechanical keyboard, so by far I am no pro. I do use another keyboard with QMK installed. The feel between the two is not much difference, both using gateron switches, this board does have a few clone switches (the only ones I could find where the light would shine through).Overall I am very pleased with this. It is well worth the price.For keycaps I used pudding keycaps for most of the keys, gold caps for the ASD and typewriter style for the numbers, which are the perfect feel for me.Photo attached (the board in the back is from a different company)

Board came quick and with everything I needed inside, including a keycap and switch puller (which I wouldn’t recommend using, but they get the job done). One thing that needs to be made clear is that this keyboard will only be as good as you make it. For example, my case is filled with sound dampening foam to reduce the hollow and ping sound. Additionally, I took the stabilizers (they come pre-lubed) and cleaned them so I could use the lube I prefer. Additionally, I clipped and bandaid modded them so I could get them as quiet as possible (more on this later). Truth be told, the experience between customers could be completely different, as some people will be more frugal than others with their mods. I definitely did not go for “budget” when choosing the rest of the parts for this kit. I have a good set of keycaps and some switches that I lubed and added switchfilms to. I could have easily grabbed some outemu blue switches for 30 dollars and a 15 dollar keyset and had a board that looked and sounded terrible (in my opinion), but I didn’t. I hope that helps visualize just how different your experience will be from mine. With that, moving forward, I have a few issues with the layers.I’m no stranger to using layers for certain actions, but whenever I turn on my computer, or unplug and reconnect the keyboard, it defaults to a different layer that doesn’t exist according to the software and doesn’t make any sense from a logical perspective. Only a few keys will switch to different commands, note that I have never messed around with any of the macro recording features, it is like this stock. Could just be a bad pcb, although I doubt it. Also, there were many times during the building process where the low price of the kit showed.The standoffs for the screws on the case make it a bit difficult to insert the pcb and plate, because you also need to slide the USB-C connector into its designated hole. This won’t be a problem for those who won’t be adding foam to the case, although I recommend that you do it. It’s cheap, easy, and fast. And it will greatly fix the imperfections in the stock sound of the board. Also, the wire for the spacebar stabilizer had some interference with the plate/pcb. If you screw the plate around the spacebar all the way in, the stabilizer will not work. That isn’t the only problem with the stabilizers, though, as even after re-lubing, wire balancing, clipping, and bandaid modding, I could not get rid of the rattle. Unfortunately, there is no fix that I can see, as I have tried troubleshooting this issue several times, adding lube to certain areas, removing it from others, nothing has worked. The stabilizers fit very snug into the plate, so it is not a case of the mounts wiggling. They don’t sound bad, but they don’t sound good, even after the amount of work I put in.The lighting effects are pretty alright, although there are a few that could be worked on. The microphone lighting effect is pretty much useless in the end and raises some red flags, as the microphone is always on. There are ways to completely customize the lighting in the software, so it’s worth downloading, but to be honest, it’s very clunky. The lights are bright enough to light up my board, and my switches are even slightly opaque. Overall it is just OK.Just for a clarification, my board came with the blockier, more square-like edges on the case. I did notice a few pictures in the reviews had cases with thinner, more round-looking walls, I believe this to be due to old vs. new batches of boards. From what I can tell, if you order a board now, it will have the “blockier” case, which I would say is a major plus, as it holds it’s shape better when contrasted with the keycaps.I definitely would recommend this DIY Kit, but tread carefully and do your research on custom mechanical keyboards before you get your hopes up. Of course, the board came as expected, however I expected to do a lot of work to get it right, and you should do the same. If you have done your research and are prepared to dive into the DIY section of keyboards, this is a good start, as you will not need to solder your switches. For a point of reference, my gateron ink switches fit perfectly fine into the plate and pcb, any MX style switch should be fine.