CM Storm Quickfire TK Mechanical Keyboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,680 words · ~8 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at what is clearly a pre-production retail
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package because I don't think Cooler Master with all of their experience
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would release a retail product that looked like this but this is pretty much
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what you'll get inside your real one with a more fancy graphic on it this is
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the quickfire TK so if you didn't know already Cooler Master has been doing
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mechanical keyboards for a little while now actually so they are quite well
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regarded they have a pretty wide variety of products I mean you look at some
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companies where they'll release sort of one mechanical keyboard with one
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particular key switch and maybe it has a backlight or it doesn't have a backl and
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you should be happy to get what you can I suppose um Cooler Master is taking a
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completely different approach and they're going after more like the guys who do a lot of different SKS with a lot
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of customizability so the quickfire t
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alone is available in Cherry MX Blue
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Cherry MX red switches and Cherry MX Brown switches they also come with
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different backlight colors to correspond to the types of switches in them so this
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I asked for if you know if you guys follow me on Twitter and you know what I
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think of keyboards I asked for obviously the Cherry MX Blue version oh check that
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out it's oh hold on oh there it is all right I thought we
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were going to be missing a key there oh well this is a good opportunity to show you guys what what it looks like so
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there you can see the Cherry MX Blue switch you can hear if I move it up to
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the mic a yeah you can hear the sexy sound
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that it makes when you actually actuate the switch I'm just going to go ahead and throw that back on it comes with a
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key removal to Tool right so uh so yes this is the Blue version with a blue
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backlight and a blue and blue switches
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I'm just going to show you guys how this works so it comes with a removable cable
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which I don't know if I I don't know if that's entirely necessary but I guess if
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that's something they want to do then that's great it also has cable routing holes so you can bring it out the one
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side bring it out the other side or bring it straight out the back of the
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keyboard depending on what you find preferable there are
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rubber uh nonslip feet here here and here and the oh the are these are my
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favorite check this out so if you get right in there you can see the entire
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both sides of it are rubber so it's an entire coating on the keyboard uh Little
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Foot itself here that's rubber so what that means is a lot of the time you
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deploy these things and the keyboard becomes slippery all of a sudden because
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only the bottom two are making contact properly and these will be just plastic
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but cooler Master's gone the extra mile and made sure that that's not going to
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cause any problems for you comes with a key removal tool so you can go ahead and
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remove the keys you can remove the keys without the key removal tool but it's
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not recommended because it can damage the switch underneath so let's go ahead
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and check this out so there you go you can see the blue the blue back plate it
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has a full metal back plate so let's find out oh that's very solid actually
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this is among the more solid keyboards that I've encountered even some
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mechanical keyboards you can tell these they're still they're not that solidly
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built cuz they'll have a lot of flex in them but you can see I'm actually
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putting a lot of force on this can you can you see the flex there's a little bit but I mean there's only so much you
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can do but it's very very solidly built that makes a great difference when
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you're mashing on something pressing buttons hard to have it not have any
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Flex to it because that's how you get that sort of that perfect tactile
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response now Blue switches are not for everyone you can hear how loud they
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are but like I said Cooler Master is making the keyboard available in a
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variety of different configurations depending on what you want the brown switch one does not come with a brown
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backlight just so you guys know so the blue switch one comes with a blue
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backlight the red switch one comes with a red backlight and the brown switch one
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comes with a white backlight so don't worry it's nothing nothing ridiculous
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like that and you know what this might be a bit of a bit of a problem here
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because oh no it works there we go I was worried that it wouldn't work because
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I'm not actually booted into Windows but it looks like all the software is running in here so the keys are
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individually backl back lit and it comes
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with a variety of modes so you can see the mode here for whatever reason has
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these ones not illuminated and this one not illuminated and the F12 not
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illuminated it also has three different brightness levels so I'm just going to hold down function here and so we'll go
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brightness all the way down wow five different brightness
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levels you know what that looks stunning look how good the backl looks when they
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CU see here if I unplug it so unplug it again you can see they've colored the
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back plate blue which means the reflection of the LEDs off the back
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plate actually makes the blue much more intense and much more striking than
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keyboards that I've seen in the past that is a really nice touch that's smart
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I haven't seen that before so let's give it a sec to oh yeah I plugged it into
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the right thing okay so give it a sec to turn itself back on here so so give me a
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moment so I managed to lock up the computer because I didn't realize it was
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doing something and I was mashing on Keys over here and it was obviously
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plugged in so I'm going to not Mash Keys too too hard anymore but I want to show
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you guys so it has five different brightness levels it has several
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different modes so that looks like sort of more of like a oh okay so there's W
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ASD mode then
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there's sort of full mode except for the function key here and these keys right
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here and then there's sort of what looks like kind of a oh is it like pulsating or
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something oh cool it has like a breathing mode that's that's really neat
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okay and then brightness you obviously can't control in that particular mode
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I'm not sure what this guy does back in a sec okay I figured it out so I think I
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got got everything down pat now this switches between six key and N key
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rollover remember n key rollover is better cuz it means you can type like
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this if you want and it'll actually register every single keystroke no big
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deal six key rollover however is more
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compatible with various bioses or with Apple computers for example that don't
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support en key rollover because this is over USB which normally sort of
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naturally doesn't support en key rollover all right next we've got I
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could not figure out for the life of me why these Keys weren't Illuminating
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number lock so when you have number lock off you can see these arrow keys
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illuminate because we are in the mode that ows us to use the other
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functionality of this of this uh block of keys here so we've got a full number
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pad block which I personally still like to see but we have a keyboard that's not
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much bigger than a 10 keyless which is really cool so by switching this
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functionality so number lock is on other functionality is on you got all your
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usual keys and page down page up delete all that good stuff and you have a full
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number pad which is very very cool right
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here this is a function key lock so this is U this
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okay however this works okay one of them's oh no sorry Windows key lock so
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you can turn your Windows keys on and off and this is your function key lock
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which will lock your function keys on and off so that you can either have them
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operate as F1 to F12 or you can have them operate as dedicated media Keys
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including play pause stop back forward mute volume down and volume up um as
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well as all of your lighting adjustments and all that good stuff so you can go
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sort of I think we showed all the different lighting modes I think that
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pretty much covers it so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look
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at the very wellb built very solid feeling I mean there's you know the
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whole CM Storm thing they just got good little touches that make it look nice
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make it function well and that pretty
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much covers it as you guys know I'm big into mechanical keyboards would I
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recommend this one absolutely don't forget to subscribe F Tech tips for
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