Author Topic: Newbie here, hello!  (Read 867 times)

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Offline spilt_yogurt

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Newbie here, hello!
« on: Mon, 08 March 2021, 10:29:49 »
Hello everyone. I only got interested in mechanical keyboards after purchasing a Redragon K552 about a year ago. I've not tinkered with it or anything but it's my daily keyboard when I'm on my home PC.

It drives my partner nuts, and is probably a little too loud when she's sat on the sofa right behind me, but oh well!

It's great to see there's an active forum dedicated to this stuff. I'm interested in perhaps purchasing a DIY kit and making myself a custom keyboard. What websites and / or tips would you recommend me to start looking at to do this? Ideally I'd like the keys to be a bit quieter than what I've got now but I'm not really sure what I need to be looking for.

Anyway it feels good to be here and I look forward to having a good mooch around the forums. Any tips or pointers on my above query would be great!

Offline Maledicted

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  • Location: Wisconsin, United States
Re: Newbie here, hello!
« Reply #1 on: Mon, 08 March 2021, 10:42:11 »
HI spilt_yogurt. Welcome to Geekhack.

Those Redragon boards seem to be great for the price.

You could try some quieter switches, or some that are not as high-pitched. I work in a school and have asked a lot of coworkers and students what they think of different clicky switches. None have minded relatively bassy switches like Alps SKCM or box jades, some are bothered by high-pitched switches like capacitive buckling spring or MX blues.

I imagine you've got some Outemu blues in your Redragon?

There are a lot of options for a quieter switch. There are dampened linears and tactiles, regular old linears and tactiles, and more exotic options like Topre (really fancy capacitive rubber domes, which are buttery smooth). It all depends on where your tastes develop. You may want to get a relatively comprehensive switch tester and play around with what's on it for a while before buying any switches in bulk. I usually recommend this one since it has a ton of different switches for a reasonably good price, though a lot are duplicates in another guise, like RGB vs standard, etc.

There are tons of websites, even just regular old Aliexpress can be used for a whole build. It sort of depends on what you want, and at what price. I'm no expert on the LEGO stuff though.

Offline spilt_yogurt

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Re: Newbie here, hello!
« Reply #2 on: Mon, 08 March 2021, 10:57:09 »
Hi Maledicted! Thanks for replying.

Yeah I love this keyboard to be honest, it sounds great (to me) and is comfy to type on.

I'm pretty new to this so just had to lookup the exact Redragon I've got, and it does indeed have blue switches. To be precise (Cherry Blue MX equivalents)

I'm just looking for something a little less clicky / loud. I'll have a look into your suggestions and will probably end up buying one of the key tester kits you recommended. Thanks so much!


Offline Maledicted

  • Posts: 2164
  • Location: Wisconsin, United States
Re: Newbie here, hello!
« Reply #3 on: Mon, 08 March 2021, 11:11:11 »
Hi Maledicted! Thanks for replying.

You're very welcome.

Yeah I love this keyboard to be honest, it sounds great (to me) and is comfy to type on.

I'm pretty new to this so just had to lookup the exact Redragon I've got, and it does indeed have blue switches. To be precise (Cherry Blue MX equivalents)

Most of the really budget mechanical options have Outemu switches. I think this may go for Redragon's whole line, but I'm not 100% sure. This is good in the case of blues, as I find Outemu blues to be crisper, more tactile, and more consistent than MX blues (Gaterons are even just slightly better). Most of the rest of the family usually are a little worse than MX though, in my opinion ... which is really not great considering how MX is sort of just a baseline as far as sound and feel goes if you ask me.

I'm just looking for something a little less clicky / loud. I'll have a look into your suggestions and will probably end up buying one of the key tester kits you recommended. Thanks so much!

Unfortunately, no tester has everything, especially if you end up wanting to get into exotic/expensive linears and tactiles, but it should at least give you an idea of which switch type you want to try to dig more into, and you may even like something like box jades enough to stick with clickies. Personally, if I had to use something modern that was quiet, with the least sacrifice in satisfying tactility, I would choose Matas' "quiet click" switches (of the switches I have tried). The name is deceiving, they're actually dampened tactiles. They're modern descendants of simplified Alps switches. They're only compatible with Alps boards and caps though. Another contender would be Topre, though I haven't even tried the dampened varieties. Even undampened they're quite a bit quieter than a clicky switch though.