Last week, we showed you a great keyboard kit called the ID80. This week, we're showing you what you can do with it with a keyboard build. This build is about $210 and is superb, with excellent feels, acoustics, and more. Let's get into it.
Case
The case will come with the ID80 keyboard kit. It is made out of anodized aluminum, a very sturdy material. It can also come in six different colors, which is very convenient to match with your setup. I got mine in grey, as it will match my shelves as well as mesh well with my walnut desk. This case is also high-profile, protecting the switches, and has a removable back panel to insert the PCB.
PCB
The PCB is one of the most interesting parts of the keyboard. It has RGB underglow, although the fully aluminum case strangely does not allow for RGB underglow. Perhaps if you added some feet and replaced the bottom panel with translucent polycarbonate, then it could work. However, this also hints that Idobao may introduce some different cases for the ID80 in the future. The PCB is specially made for the case and plate, and is also fully hot-swappable with Kailh sockets, which fit most mechanical switches.
Switches
For this build, we're going with Kailh Box Brown switches. These are an affordable option, while having a decent tactile bump. Although some may want a bigger tactile bump, I like the small bumps of browns because they are big enough to stop typos, but not so big as to hinder typing. They also require no lubrication, as the contact points are very small and are already pre-lubed.
Stabilizers
The stabilizers that come with the ID80 are PCB-mount snap in stabilizers. They will be OK, but I would definitely recommend applying many modifications to them, such as band-aid, lubrication, clipping, etc. Snap-in stabilizers are notorious for being rattly.
Keycaps
As I said in the previous post about the ID80, this keyboard has a very unusual layout. If you look at the two keys to the right of the spacebar, they are not the normal width for bottom row keycaps. Instead of the normal 1.25u, they are 1.5u, the same length as your tab and backslash keys. This means that many keycap sets do not work with this keyboard. For our keycaps, we've gone with the HK Gaming 9009 PBT keycaps. This is a very good keycap set for the price, as the keycaps are quite thick and the caps are produced with dye sublimation, a very effective coloring process that creates durable legends and colors. Additionally, it has 1.5u bottom row keys, so we can use it with the ID80.
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