- It's gonna get messy. My wife's keyboard has
been acting up lately and that seems like a simple enough fix. Huck it and buy a new one, right? What? No. This is an almost perfectly good keyboard. It's got 102 keys on it
that all work just fine. So how hard could it be
to replace one of them. Just, well, it's not that
one, it's this one, actually. This is getting harder
than I thought already. Pop off the key cap,
replace the key switch, solder on a new one and bipity snappity, it's off to the races, right? Well, actually, no, it's
not quite that simple. This is a pre-built keyboard that doesn't have
hot-swappable switch sockets. These key switches are
soldered, but don't fret. While it might sound a little scary, it's actually pretty easy
to replace a dead switch. Just means we're gonna
have to get intimate. Like I get intimate with our sponsors. Jackery's Explorer 1500 Power Station provides a huge 1500 watt hour capacity with up to seven devices
able to charge simultaneously and takes just four hours to
get from zero to 80% charge. Get 10% off with code LinusTechTips
at the link down below. (upbeat intro music) This SteelSeries 7G mechanical keyboard is my wife Yvonne's daily driver at home where it has faithfully done
its duty for many years. And it is kind of old at this point, like baby Linus with frosted tips old. That's right, this bad
boy, this exact keyboard graced ye old NCIX casting
couch over 11 years ago. And look at us, we've both
come a long way since then. Since that initial review,
it ended up bouncing around at the office before eventually
ending up back at my house for Yvonne's work and casual gaming use. And the reason for it is
that it has this outstanding, super gently sloped and
extra long wrist rest that she finds extra comfortable. That's actually the only
thing that she really likes about it because she's not a huge fan of Cherry MX Black mechanical switches. When it launched, it cost over $150 and had cutting edge features like USB and audio passthrough, not to
mention that it has both a USB and PS2 interface so that
you can plug it into, that's right, all the most
modern motherboards. (chuckles) The only problem with it is
that it's a little tired. And recently the E key has been acting up, only registering key presses
about half of the time. Why? Well, that could
be any number of things. Dust in the switch,
corrosion, a lifted PCB trace. We're not actually gonna
know until we crack it open. But before we get to
that, we're gonna fire up QMK's keyboard tester
and check to make sure that all of the other keys actually work. It's not as bad as one in every two, but I've missed 2 out of about 20 so I can see why that
would be bothering her. Everything else looks good
except she didn't even tell me that this one was broken. No, it's not, it's a function key, that's why I left the
SteelSeries logo one on there. And this legend just doesn't
have the functions marked. - Oh.
- So it's just the E key. That's the only one we
have to replace today. - [Colin] Okay, well then
my 102 key count is wrong, it's 103 keys. - It's 103 keys that still work. The best part of that
is it takes our entire keyboard repair cost from $2
for two key switches to $1 plus shipping and the
materials that we're gonna need to perform the repair. So why don't we walk through
what we're going to need? First things first, you'll
need the soldering iron. We're using our Hakko 888D
but you don't need anything that's expensive and in
fact, you probably don't need to buy one, odds are, if you're
a big geek, which you are, you're watching this
video, you've got a friend or a family member who's got
a soldering iron lying around and the odds of you damaging
it, doing something like this are extremely low, so I
would just borrow one. You'll also need a
screwdriver or screwdrivers that match the board,
in this case, Phillips. Thank you, SteelSeries. Some flux core solder, leaded or unleaded. We suggest the latter if you want to be more environmentally
friendly or the former if you want it to be a little
bit easier to work with. Along with sort of solder wick. Get the name brand stuff
from Gootwick by the way. Trust me on this one. And some flux for keeping everything nice and clean and flowing. We're using this MG
Chemicals no clean flux because it comes in
this convenient syringe, but you can also go full Rossmann and liberally dose the board where needed with any other kinds
of flux that you like. Keep in mind that you want
to clean up any excess after your repair because
flux is mildly corrosive. So we're gonna be using,
what did you spray this with? - Soap.
- Soap, okay. Soap, yeah, there you go. Also, you might want a key cap puller and we've also got a
solder sucker as well. This is a really, really low quality one and I wouldn't recommend using this one, but basically you preload
a little thing and go bop and it theoretically sucks up the solder. I personally find the
wick works a lot better. - Hm-hm.
Now it's time to snap a quick pick of
the keyboard for reference. This is a slightly different
layout than I'm used to and to pull off all the key caps so that we can shame my wife
for the state of her keyboard. You know what, the F
keys are not as dirty. I suspect once we make
our way toward the middle of the board, things are gonna
get kind of nasty though. Okay, I would strongly
recommend not breathing in, ladies and gentlemen. (can spraying)
(Linus yells) Oh. Oh, it's everywhere. Oh gosh.
- Oh, god. - Oh wow. It's really
still not that clean. You know what, I think this is as clean as it's getting today, sorry hun. Got my screwdriver,
soon to be lttstore.com Got my hydration, lttstore.com. Got my work surface here,
okay, it's a mousepad, but lttstore.com In addition to the four
screws on the bottom, they've got those little plastic tabs that you can accidentally break
off if you're not careful. So we're just gonna put
our iFixit spudger in here. Let's give it a little,
oh yeah, there we go. By modern electronic standards, this is very openable and repairable. Oh wow, there's a lot
of crud inside it too. Actually, nope. You're
off the hook Yvonne. I think a lot of this is just dried glue or some kind of like manufacturing schmoo. You see that Colin? It looks like it's like some kind of, maybe it used to be glued together - Or it could be milk.
- Oh, it's not milk. - [Colin] It was only at
the front and it's white. Did you use that keyboard Linus? - No, I never used this keyboard. He knows I'm the cereal eater,
but no, this was not me. Our next step is to pull
this baby up so you can see why old mechanical keyboards
had such a good reputation for being built like tanks because there's a solid steel plate down the middle of this thing. Ah, there we go. Now that's something we're
not gonna want to break here. Man, January 30th, 2008
is the manufacturing date for this board in here
for the passthrough USB and passthrough front panel audio. Freakin' love it. And this is about as far as
we have to go here, that's it. That's the raw keyboard right there. It's got keys and it's a board. One thing we have to be careful
of is these pins on the back if we want our front passthroughs to work. They're not super fragile
though so I'm not too worried about doing anything to them. We could just bend them back
if we accidentally bend them. And we could I think, if we
really wanted to desolder every single key switch and
then remove the steel plate, we could separate these two layers, but they've been twisted into
place with little steel tabs, probably for a reason. And it doesn't look like
we have to pull them apart in order to replace just one key switch. So let's go ahead and have a look at which switch is coming out. It's gonna be this one,
this guy right here. Okay, let's go ahead.
I'm just gonna meh-meh. (grunts) I hate these things. Here we go boys. We're gonna wick it up. Now this is interesting,
SteelSeries or whoever they're OEM is, apparently saw fit to bend over a the little
stems from the key switches. So I can't just pull it right out without bending these little tabs back. You know what, it's also not quite there in terms of being fully wicked. I thing we gotta, yeah,
we gotta lift that, oh. There it is. There's our Cherry MX Black switch. That's right, you've seen all
50 million of your keystrokes. Sorry buddy. The switch is definitely
dead if it wasn't, which it was. (tester beeping) - [Colin] Something ain't right in there. - (chuckles) There, see that's
how it's supposed to work. You've probably seen
diagrams of this online. Basically, you've got
your stem at the top. That's where your key cap mounts to, so you got little rails on the sides so that it slides vertically only, You got your spring, this is
what pops up the key switch when you are done pressing it down. And this is also what controls
how much tension there is, so like how much force is
required to push it down. Then right here, you've
got your contact points. And you know, it's funny, I think Cherry told me
these are gold-plated, but that doesn't really look like gold. - [Colin] It's probably worn off by now. - I mean I guess it could
be worn off or something. (Linus beeps) Sending messages across
the Atlantic. Sorry. Let's grab one that is
confirmed actually working and assembled correctly
for this next part. Oh wow, yeah, that one is borked 'cause here's how it's
supposed to go down. So it goes down, there's
you're tactile bump (bump sound) and then
there's your contact point right under it. Let's put on a new one, shall we? I keep trying to open this bag and Colin keeps not letting me do it. Can I open this bag yet?
- I'll allow it now. - All right, did we
order these form DigiKey? - Yes we did.
- All right. So these are brand new
Cherry MX Black switches. And in theory, and we know
this from our tour of Cherry way back, (scoffs) it was a
lot of years ago actually, that the design of this could
actually be subtly different. They have been revising
silently their cherry MX lineup constantly over the years. But the goal is that whatever
changes they make to them, the reliability, the feel, and the sound should all be the same. Theoretically, if I gave
this keyboard to someone not telling them which
one has been swapped out with a switch from 10 to 12 years later, they shouldn't be able to tell. I'm gonna pop this on. I do not see any obvious
difference in any of the molding, even though we know for a
fact that they would have had to redo their molds many,
many times since then, molds don't last forever. Oh, this little bump here is higher. You know what, I think
the logo is high res. It is, (gasps) oh, we
need the microscope Colin. There we go, that's our new key cap. This is our old one. See that. So they're probably
just at different stages in their wear. - Yeah, that's just an
interjectory pin mark. So it doesn't matter
- No. but it's interesting that it's changed, right?
- But it has changed. - They've updated their
mold design clearly. - Absolutely. This Cherry logo, I am fairly certain that that logo is
significantly higher res now. - [Colin] It's slightly out of focus but- - Yeah, it's really hard
to tell because of that. I can't hold it steady enough
for us to be able to tell and this mount is just not good enough. - We could just trust you. - I can't tell to the touch. - Good.
- Let's solder it on then. - [Colin] Yeah. - First things first, I'm gonna just do what the original assemblers
did and I'm going to bend these little stems over now. Now, it's time to flux it up. You don't want to flux
up this stage, okay? Sorry Colin, I can't resist. Yeah, yeah, technically you're
supposed to heat the thing, not the solder, but
whatever, deal with that. Okay, we've got a ball of
solder on there. (boop sounds) Oh, we need more. (boop) Okay, and let's do the
same thing again. Whoops. Slipped a little there. I don't think I did any worse
than the original assembly. Now it's time for a quick reassembly. Like not full reassembly,
we're just gonna put the, oh, there we go. The IO passthrough board in place. And let's do a quick test run here. One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Yay, we did it. Freaking awesome. Now we can put the rest
of the board together. I kind of feel like it should
get a bit of a better cleaning before we formally put it together. Should we just run it
through the dishwasher? - No.
- Colon and I did a video about that, wow, that was right
when you started, wasn't it? - It was. Uh-huh.
- Like two years ago. Damn. Okay, so one of those
keyboards did eventually die. Colin daily drove it at his desk. - Multiple of them actually.
- Oh, more than one. - [Colin] Just moisture in
keyboard bad. Do not do. - Point is we're just gonna
get some soap and water and clean the deck, then assemble it. And after some deck swabbing
and key cap cleaning and final reassembly,
we're ready to show off an old keyboard. But one that performs as well as it did when it was new and that
will continue to soldier on for at least a few more years. And at what a great price, right? Who wants to spend a hundred dollars on a new mechanical keyboard when you can have a perfectly good one for a dollar plus a little
bit solder and some tools. So all that's left to do
is thank our sponsor, NZXT. With NZXT BLD, getting a custom built PC is easier than ever, just set your budget, see how your PC will perform
in your favorite games and BLD takes care of the rest. Their recommendation engine
provides benchmark data for your expected performance
at 1080p and 1440p and their FPS estimates are guaranteed to within 10% accuracy. You can customize and upgrade your build from various NZXT case options
and RGB lighting setups, and they feature transparent pricing with a flat $99 assembly
fee in your local currency. Your system will be built and shipped within 48 business hours
and all your PC components will be covered under one warranty. They even offer expert live
chat for real-time help and troubleshooting, and
free and easy returns for any system that doesn't meet the build engine FPS
performance guarantee. So check out NZXT BLD today using the link in the video description. If you guys enjoyed this
video, maybe go watch our should you clean your
keyboard in the dishwasher video. Note, by the way, you
probably don't want to do it. Turns out we had corrosion issues. Maybe we could've done a better job of like drying them, I don't know.
