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it's gonna get messy

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my wife's keyboard has been acting up lately and that seems like a simple

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enough fix i couldn't buy a new one right what no

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this is an almost perfectly good keyboard it's got

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keys on it that all work just fine so how hard could it be to replace one of

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them yes well it's not that one it's this one actually this is getting harder

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than i thought already pop off the keycap replace the key switch solder on

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a new one and bippity snappidy it's off to the races right well

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actually no not quite that simple this is a

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pre-built keyboard that doesn't have hot swappable switch sockets these key

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switches are soldered but don't fret while it might sound a little scary it's

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actually pretty easy to replace a dead switch

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it just means we're gonna have to get uh

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intimate like i get intimate with our

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percent charge get ten percent off with code Linus tech tips at the link down

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below

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this steelseries 7g mechanical keyboard is my wife Yvonne's daily driver at home

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where it has faithfully done its duty for many years and it is kind of old at

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this point like baby Linus with frosted tips sold that's

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right this bad boy this exact keyboard graced yield ncix casting couch over 11

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years ago and look at us we've both come a long way since then

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since that initial review it ended up bouncing around at the office before

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eventually ending up back at my house for Yvonne's work and casual gaming use

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and the reason for it is that it has this outstanding super gently sloped and

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extra long wrist rest that she finds extra comfortable that's actually the

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only thing that she really likes about it because she's not a huge fan of

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cherry mx black mechanical switches when it launched it cost over 150 us

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dollars and had cutting-edge features like usb and audio pass-through not to

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mention that it has both a usb and ps2

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interface so that you can plug it into that's right all the most modern

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motherboards the only problem with it is that it's a

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little tired and recently the e key has been acting up only registering key

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presses about half of the time why well that could be any number of things dust

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in the switch corrosion a lifted pcb trace we're not actually gonna know

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until we crack it open but before we get to that we're gonna fire up qmk's

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keyboard tester and check to make sure that all of the other keys actually work

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it's not as bad as one in every two but i've missed two out of about 20 so i can

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see why that would be bothering

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her everything else looks good except she didn't even tell me that this one

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was broken no it's not uh it's a function key that's

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why i left the steel series logo one on there and this legend just doesn't have

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the functions marked oh so it's just the e key that's the

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only one we have to replace today okay well then my 102 key count is wrong it's

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103 keys 103 keys that still work the best part of that is it takes our entire

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keyboard repair cost from two dollars for two key switches to one dollar

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plus shipping and the materials that we're going to need to perform the

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repair so why don't we walk through what we're going to need first things first you'll need a soldering iron we're using

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our hakko 888d but you don't need anything that's expensive and in fact

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you probably don't need to buy one odds are if you're a big geek

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which you are you're watching this video you've got a friend or a family member

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who's got a soldering iron lying around and the odds of you damaging it doing something like this are extremely low so

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i would just borrow one you'll also need a screwdriver or screwdrivers that match

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the board in this case philips thank you steel series some flux core solder

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leaded or unleaded we suggest the ladder if you want to be more environmentally

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friendly or the former if you want it to be a little bit easier to work with along with some solder wick get the name

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brand stuff from gootwick by the way trust me on this one and some flux for

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keeping everything nice and clean and flowing we're using this mg chemicals no

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clean flux because it comes in this convenient syringe but you can also go

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full rosman and liberally douse the board where needed with any other kind

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of flux that you like keep in mind that you want to clean up any excess after

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your repair because flux is mildly corrosive so we're going to be using

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what did you spray this with soap soap okay so yeah there you go also you might

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want a keycap puller and we've also got a solder sucker as well this is a really

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really low quality one and i wouldn't recommend using this one but basically

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you preload a little thing you go and it theoretically sucks up the solder

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i personally find wick works a lot better now it's time to snap a quick

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pick of the keyboard for reference this is a slightly different layout than i'm used to and pull off all the keycaps so

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that we can shame my wife for the state of her

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of her keyboard you know what the f keys are not as dirty i suspect once we make our

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way toward the middle of the board things are going to get kind of nasty though okay

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i would strongly recommend not breathing in ladies and

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gentlemen oh

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oh it's everywhere oh gosh oh wow it's really still not that clean

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you know what i think this is as clean as it's getting today

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sorry hon got my screwdriver soon to blt store.com got my hydration LTT Store.com

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got my work surface here okay it's a mousepad but lttstore.com in addition to

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the uh four screws on the bottom they've got those little plastic tabs that you can

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accidentally break off if you're not careful so we're just gonna

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put our ifixit spudger in here just give it a little oh yeah there we

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go by modern electronic standards this is

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very openable and repairable oh wow there's a lot of crud inside it

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too actually nope you're off the hook Yvonne i think a lot of this is just

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dried glue or some kind of like manufacturing schmoo

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you see that colin it looks like it's like uh some kind of maybe it used to be

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glued together or it could be milk oh it's not milk it's only at the front and

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it's white did you use that keyboard Linus no i never used this keyboard he

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knows i'm a serial eater but no this was this was not me our next step is to pull

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this baby up so you can see why

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old mechanical keyboards had such a good reputation for being built like tanks

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because there's a solid steel plate down the middle of this thing ah there we go

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now that's something we're not going to want to break here man january 30th 2008

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is the manufacturing date for this board in here for the pass-through usb and

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pass-through front panel audio freaking love it and this is about as

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far as we have to go here that's it that's the raw keyboard right there it's

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got keys and it's a board one thing we have to be careful of is

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these pins on the back if we want our front pass-throughs to work they're not super fragile though so i'm not too

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worried about doing anything to them we just bend them back if we accidentally bend them and we could i think if we

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really wanted to desolder every single key switch and then remove the steel

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plate we could separate these two layers but they've been twisted into place with

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little steel tabs probably for a reason and it doesn't look like we have to pull

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them apart in order to replace just one key switch so let's go ahead and

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have a look at which switch is coming out

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it's going to be this one this guy right here

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okay let's go ahead we're just gonna

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hit these things here we go boys and

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wick it up

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now this is interesting steel series or whoever their oem is apparently saw fit

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to bend over the little stems from the

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key switches so i can't just pull it right out without

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bending these little tabs back you know what it's also not quite there in terms

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of being uh fully wicked i think we gotta yeah we gotta lift that oh

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there it is there's our cherry mx black switch

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that's right you've seen all 50 million of your keystrokes sorry buddy the

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switch is definitely dead if it wasn't

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which it was something that right in there

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there see that's how it's supposed to work

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you've probably seen diagrams of this online basically you've got your stem at

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the top that's where your keycap mounts to so

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you got little rails on the sides so that it slides vertically only

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you got your spring this is what pops up the key switch when you are done

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pressing it down this is also what controls how much tension there is like

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how much force is required to push it down then right here

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you got your contact points and you know what's funny i think cherry

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told me these are gold-plated but that doesn't really look like gold it's

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probably worn off by now i mean i guess it could be uh could be worn off or

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something sending messengers across the atlantic

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sorry let's grab one that is confirmed actually um working

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and assembled correctly for this next part

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oh wow yeah that one is borked

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because here's how it's supposed to go down so it goes down there's your

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tactile bump and then there's your contact point

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right under it let's put on a new one shall we i keep trying to open this bag

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and colin keeps not letting me do it can i open this bag yet we'll allow it now all right did we order these from

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digikey yes we did all right so these are brand new cherry mx black

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switches and in theory and we know this from our tour of cherry way back

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a lot of years ago actually that the design of this could actually be subtly

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different they have been revising silently their cherry mx lineup

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constantly over the years but the goal is that whatever changes they make to

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them the reliability the feel and the sound should all be the same

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theoretically if i gave this keyboard to someone not telling them which one has

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been swapped out with a switch from 10 to 12 years later they shouldn't be

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able to tell now pop this on i

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do not see any obvious difference in any

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of the molding even though we know for a fact that they

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would have had to redo their molds many many times since then molds don't last

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forever oh this little bump here is higher you know what

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i think the logo is high res

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it is oh we need the microscope colin there we

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go that's our new keycap

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this is our old one see that so they're probably just at

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different stages in their wear yeah that's that's just an

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injector pin mark so it doesn't matter but it's interesting that it's changed

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right so they've changed they've updated their mold design clearly absolutely

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this cherry logo i am fairly certain that that logo is

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significantly higher res now um

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yeah it's really hard to tell because of that i can't hold it steady enough for

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us to be able to tell and this mount is just not good enough we could just trust

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you i can't tell to the touch

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good let's solder it on then yep first things first i'm going to just

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do what the original assemblers did and i'm going to bend these little

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stems over now it's time to flux it up

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you don't want to flex up this stage okay

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i said sorry colin i can't resist yeah yeah technically you're supposed to heat

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the thing not the solder but whatever deal with it

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okay we've got a ball of solder on there oh we need more

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okay and let's do the same thing again whoops

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slipped a little there i don't think i did any worse than the original assembly

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now it's time for a quick reassembly like not not full reassembly we're just

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going to put the uh there we go the i o pass through board in place

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and let's do a quick test run here

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yay we did it freaking awesome now we can put the rest

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of the board together i kind of feel like it should get a bit of a better cleaning before we formally put it

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together should we just run it through the dishwasher no paul and i did a video

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about that wow that was right when you started wasn't it it was two years ago

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damn okay so one of those keyboards did eventually die colin daly drove it

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multiple of them actually oh more than one just moisture in keyboard bad do not

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do point is uh we're just gonna get some soap and water and clean the deck then

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assemble it and after some deck swabbing and keycap cleaning and final reassembly

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we're ready to show off

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an old keyboard but one that performs as well as it did

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when it was new and that will continue to soldier on for at least a few more

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years and at what a great price right who wants to

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spend a hundred dollars on a new mechanical keyboard and you can have a perfectly good one for

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a dollar plus a little bit solder and some tools

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so all that's left to do is thank our sponsor nzxt with nzxt build getting a

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components will be covered under one warranty they even offer expert live

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the build engine FPS performance guarantee so check out nzxt build today

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using the link in the video description if you guys enjoyed this video maybe go

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watch our should you clean your keyboard in the dishwasher video

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note by the way you probably don't want to do it turns out we had corrosion

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issues maybe we could have done a better job of like drying them i don't know