The Worst Hobby on the Internet - Mechanical Keyboards (Beginners Guide)

there is a hobby that is exploding with popularity on the internet right now and if you learn how to do it you can actually make a good amount of money these products are not readily available so selling them can help you earn a nice chunk of change for example at the beginning of June I bought a keyboard kit from a brand called key cult for $700 that might sound absurd but after I'm finished building it it is appraised to sell for $2,000 on the aftermarket [Music] today's video is sponsored by - Lane - Lina is a password manager that helps you remember all of your passwords why do you need - Lane don't lie to me you don't remember every single one of your passwords and if you do that's because you use the same one for everything and if you're that kind of person I hope you enjoy getting all of your accounts hacked one day - Lane Auto fills all of your financial and personal information every time you log into an account link with their service it works on all of your devices so you 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least once there is no affiliate code or specific product I want you to buy I am literally just telling you this because I've tried it and it is amazing frustration anger sadness depression and that is all of the praise that this hobby is gonna get for the rest of the video you see I am actually incredibly disappointed with the mechanical keyboard community there are no good beginner tutorials on how to get into this hobby there are thousands of two to three-hour uploads of someone who built one on their twitch stream there are really specific tutorials on only one specific model build but from everything I've seen there isn't one single good introduction to mechanical keyboards video anywhere on the Internet every video I've seen always approaches this hobby as if you already know something three months ago I didn't know anything about keyboards and the only reason I was able to learn anything is because I was lucky enough to run into someone named a hot types which if you don't know he is the number one mechanical keyboard content creator on the Internet aka the guy who built T Fu's keyboard dude this thing is nuts oh my god who also happens to be a cool guy would you consider yourself a cool guy no so in this video I'm going to tell you everything that the mechanical keyboard community forgot to tell you which basically means everything that people made fun of me for and then taught me about afterwards in order to build a custom mechanical keyboard you need six parts a case a PCB stabilizers a plate the switches and lastly the key caps and if you want to build the keyboard well you need one more thing yes you heard me correctly Lou get your mind out of the gutter why do you lube switches why it's one of those things where once you try it you can't go back like it just makes your switch feel and sound so much nicer and it's just not something many people are aware of but once you try it it's like it was life-changing for me there are different types of Lube that people use to lube their mechanical keyboard switches but the most commonly used one is one called krytox 2:05 grade zero find some of that and order it there are three types of mechanical keyboard switches linear tactile and clicky all three of those categories typically feel and sound different Linear's have a consistent press all the way down tactile switches have kind of a bump and you feel a bit of pressure before the switch actually actuates and click e's are basically little metal maracas in the keyboard community people will typically yell at you that the type of switch you pick comes down to preference but in my opinion there are better switches explain why click e's are the worst type of switch oh wait so it's not preference yeah for example right now I really like a linear switch called novelty creams they feel smooth and have a really nice sound Cherry MX blacks are also a linear switch but they feel cheap and scratchy in comparison if you want to find a switch that works best for you I highly recommend finding a switch tester and buying one so that you can see what you think you would like best PCBs are kind of like the motherboard of your keyboard your switches will be going into your PCB your switches will have either three or five pins on the bottom so make sure that your PCB can support that for a beginner you just need to know there are two types of PCBs hot-swap and solder Abal they could be a bunch of different sizes but we will cover that later hot-swap PCBs lets you pop the switch into the board whereas solder oral PCBs need to have the switch actually soldered in for this you need a soldering iron and a good one will typically cost you $100 if you plan on building just one keyboard then I highly recommend you get a hotspot PCB so you don't have to spend extra money on solder and a soldering iron just keep in mind if you are going to be using hot swap if you pop the switches in and out too much you can damage the pads on the PCB I've done it both ways and I think hots off for your first build will be fine okay so there are different sized keyboards and there are also different formats so there's 60% 65% 75% tkl or 80% and full-size boards and that sounds like a lot of work those are not all of the sizes and there are other sizes but they are not nearly as popular what the keyboard community doesn't tell you is that as soon as you start looking for anything that isn't 60% it becomes significantly harder to find and a lot more expensive for example if you needed to build a 60% custom mechanical keyboard you could probably build a cheap one from anywhere from $100 to 150 dollars if you wanted to build let's say a 65% board which is like five more buttons the cost literally triples you end up paying 200 extra dollars for five more switches and a little bit of a big case I'm not saying that you should avoid bigger sizes but I'm just letting you know that as soon as you see something that you want or need if it's not 60% prepare to have a hole in your wallet so a plate is what you put the switches through before they go into the PCB because it helps hold them in place there are different materials in different formats however if you want something with a really nice sound I highly recommend you get brass it's always gonna be more expensive to get brass but trust me I've tried the different materials and nothing sounds as nice as brass but something else the keyword community doesn't tell you is that there are different formats for plates so PCBs can normally support different types of formats and depending on the key caps that you're using you need to make sure you order the right plate key caps are measured in units so if you see that your key cap set has a left shift button that is to you you need to get a to you plate however as a general rule most key cap sets have a left shift button that is 2.25 you use this as a general rule if you don't want to do your research I say this because you're talking to a guy who is told to just order a plate online and proceeded to order eight incorrect plates that no longer have any use that may or may not have cost him $300 that he can't get back do you remember the time you told me to get a plate that didn't fit my PC me I'm gonna get called out for this by the way on the small chance you run across this there's this really weird Korean format called wkl do yourself a favor avoid it why it's an homage to vintage keyboards like the windows key wasn't around many decades ago so keyboards back then they physically had that blocker windows key wasn't a thing yeah so the custom enthusiasts seemed I guess they have a really big appreciation for vintage and older things and that layout just kind of became popular sure saying I can blame hipsters most people refer to these as stabs for short you need stabs to stabilize the longer key caps on the keyboard like your left shift key your spacebar your right shift key the backspace key and your Enter key what again I got to learn firsthand through experience is that there are different kinds of stabilizers and there are higher quality ones for example I was using snap in stabs I was building one for a client I went to ship it I packaged the whole thing incredibly well and when it arrived I came to find out that instead of staying snapped in it snapped out which after I complained about this publically I was made fun of asking why I didn't buy screw and stabilizers no one told me anything about screwing stabilizers long story short I had to desolder all of the switches from the PCB reinstall the stabs resolder it all together resulting in eight hours that I could have spent doing something else anyways do yourself a favor if you're building one buy screw ins not snap ins so like I mentioned earlier with different size PCBs there are also different size cases there are different materials and finishes that cases can be made of some of those accommodate those of you who love RGB and some of them have sleek minimal designs whatever you choose just make sure to get the same size as your PCB and lastly the key caps you can get a cheap $20 sell on Amazon or you can spend $200 on a nice gmk set as for the different types of materials I'm gonna be honest I don't know that much about them but there are specific videos for that topic on YouTube as for the profiles it's pretty simple there are a lot of different types of heights and sizes keycaps all the different types will fit on top of your switches but the different profiles are gonna come down to preference there's SA XD ad sa cherry a bunch of different types and if you want to see them all you can just put in a Google search for key cap profiles I personally love sa it's a tall thick chunky key cap and I like the hollow sound that it has when it hits against brass so where do you buy this stuff do you remember Neopets do you remember how whenever you needed to find an item there was a little wizard search feature that could help you find the simple things but anytime you needed something a little bit nicer or specific you would have to search each individual store going from user to user to user hoping to find the thing you needed and when you finally found a seller it was sold out yeah that's basically mechanical keyboards what I mean by that is mechanical keyboards are not usually manufactured in large quantities any time you see a really unique or cool design that you think would look really nice for you oftentimes it is a small project that is crowd funded and started by an individual within the community however there is one place that you can definitely go to if you were looking to find stuff that is almost always available KBD fans is probably the most beginner friendly website where you can find full DIY kits or individual parts we'll talk a little bit more about them and other stores later here's the thing keyboard stuff is not like computer stuff you can't go on websites just hoping that it's available and have it Amazon Prime to your place in two days remember how I said that most projects are started by an individual and funded by the community well if there is an item that we know for sale that you liked but you missed the very short buy period the only way you were going to get it is on the after market there's a subreddit called our slash mechanical keyboards which is pretty much the only place you are going to find stuff secondhand now I don't know much about setting up bots but if you're serious about getting something that you want then you're gonna have to learn on how to set up pings to come to your phone the second something with your keyword gets posted because I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to find something and it sold out than the ten minutes that it was posted now let's say you're a completionist a real nerd and you want to understand everything there is to know about keyboards where do you go obviously not this video this is for beginners well there is a website that you will get recommended by a lot of veterans of the mechanical keyboard scene and that is geek hack org just the mechanical people celebrated it's still the biggest has the biggest following of any keyboard related platform but it's like flooded with memes and other stuff that isn't necessarily informational decaf definitely has tons of information it has history has years of history too it's a great like place to learn about keyboards as well as stay up-to-date on upcoming products that are coming out products that are currently live that you can purchase is that why it looks like it's a website from a forum page in 2002 yeah now while I understand this website was created while forum styled websites were popular this thing is so much text that it makes reddit look like a picture book the worst part is the website throws terminology at you and there is nothing on the front page that even tells you what those terms mean speaking of terminology here are some words you are going to hear a lot in this hobby and here's what they mean group buy you pay for this item now and you'll see it God knows Wynn group buy is you putting up money to fund a project that is hopefully going to be shipped to you within the next year to six months no I'm not kidding if the item you are trying to fund looks nice it is usually going to take six months to a year for you to finally get what you want Lube no one is making a sex joke people put lube and their mechanical keyboards but it is possible someone did make a sex joke too any time you see any words that sound like try Bose is three two oh four or some weird complicated sounding name and the numbers afterwards they're typically talking about Lube there are some switches with letters and numbers in it as well but most of the time I promise you it's loop switch this should be obvious by now but it is the little mechanical device that goes under your key cap mods no we're not talking about moderators we're talking about the key caps they're often different colors on fancy key caps or different colors on key cap sets GM k GM k is the german manufacturer for the cherry profile key cap you see that before a keycap set it is cherry profile and probably pretty expensive key cults key cult is the Louis Vuitton of keyboards it is a brand if you ever see it and you don't have a lot of money to spend close your eyes turn around and walk the other way interest check and I see is an individual gauging the interest level of how much the audience of mechanical keyboards would like to see their idea come to life so where do you buy these things well Nathan aka take hot types the guy we've been talking to throughout this video he is the number one mechanical keyboard content creator in the world right now he is a large factor as to why this hobby has exploded in the last year he is sponsored by a lot of these websites and if you want to help and support him for giving us this information and being a behind fine fine fine if you want to help support him there are links below his twitch stream that you can click on that actually our affiliate codes that help you get a percentage off I'm trying to help him out okay not me this also saves you money so calm your ass down so to wrap it up mechanical keyboards worth building as poorly as this hobby is explained online yes while there is not a lot of easy to digest information about this niche you should take that as opportunity because a lot of people don't know how to build these keyboards or how to buy the right parts if you take it upon yourself to do that you're looking at a potential side hustle that can make you a good amount of money learn the hobby build one for yourself and then if you have some extra cash build one and sell it to somebody else I guarantee you any of the stuff that you build if you follow anything that was said here is gonna be infinitely nicer than any razor Corsair whatever type of keyboard you're looking at buying so to wrap it up I hope you found this video creative entertaining or informative in any way shape or form and as always have a great day [Music]

Channel: KristoferYee

Views: 869,538

Rating: 4.7769036 out of 5

Keywords: Funny, Vine, Twitter, Xbox, Sony, Playstation, Microsoft, Computer, Build, Animation, Vlog, Rap, Kristofer, Yee, nigahiga, asian, PUBG, Freestyle, GTX, GTA, i9, i7, 1080, 1070, Ti, Crypto, GPU, Winminer, nice, hash, bitcoin, ethereum, UFD, Tech, NOAB, Nerd, on, budget, scattervolt, tech, linus, jayztwocents, how, to, tutorial, reddit, Buildapcsales, science, studio, rig, build, 8gb, gaming, pc, fortnite, pubg, craigslist, ddr3, ddr4, money, cheap, saving, scarra, pokimane, quarterjade, fedmyster, masayoshi, lilypichu, taehatypes, taeha, types, offline, tv, offlinetv

Id: xzWm40Tq4F4

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/eugeneware]

Actually pretty decent intro for beginners.