When looking for budget custom options, KPrepublic has emerged as one of those stores, much like
KBDfans, that offer a range of kits that are relatively affordable, and readily available.
The main line of customs that KPrepublic offer is the XD range.
There’s the 60%, 75%, and the 96 key.
Today we’re going to build the XD84 which is the 75% option.
And on their store, they do offer a couple of case options, including a plastic case,
bent steel cases, and CNC’d aluminium.
As always, we start with the PCB, and it’s a bit of a busy one.
Fortunately on the product page, they do have a labelled picture.
I’m not a PCB guy, so I’m not quite sure what some of this stuff does.
We have some sort of expansion interface.
We have our 7 RGB SMD underglow LEDs, and also the ability to add more.
There’s the Kimera Core, and the magnetic reset next to that which you need to reflash
the board if you wish.
These things here is something to do with some LEDs or something.
And finally, this is powered by mini USB.
Now to the case.
It comes pre assembled like this, so yes, it does include the plate, and that’s not
bad for 70 bucks.
Usually you’d have to spend another 20 bucks or so for a plate.
The person that I’m building this for wanted black, but this does come or will come in
a few other colours.
And this is version 2 of the XD case.
The main difference being that this now has a tempered glass bottom, which is called stalinite.
And this acts as the diffuser for the underglow RGB LEDs.
Whereas before, they used an acrylic piece.
The glass piece is secured by 4 Phillips head screws, and it pops straight off.
And it’s double sided taped to an aluminium piece that goes around the sides.
The aluminium supporter piece is 1.5mm thick, while the glass is a nice 3mm thick.
When I asked about why they changed to glass, they mentioned that some customers were having
issues with the acrylic cracking.
Glass may seem fragile, and well it is if you were to drop it, but it won’t crack
like acrylic under pressure.
And notice how there weren’t any standoffs on the bottom.
This is because the plate is screwed to the case itself.
This is what we refer to as a top mount design.
So we have a bunch of screws around the perimeter, and we have to remove the flip up feet to
access some of them.
The plate is made from 1.1mm thick aluminium, so it’s quite light.
And it has a nice smooth finish to it.
And we can see that it has some decent layout compatibility.
So you can pretty much do whatever, besides split spacebars.
We’re just going to use some Gateron Red’s for the keyswitches, which is a light linear
switch, and is relatively smooth.
When first putting them in, it doesn’t sound and feel very convincing at all, even though
it’s all screwed in, but that will change later.
I’m trying some screw in stabilisers from KPrepublic.
They come with gold plated wires, and nylon washers to ensure the screws don’t short
anything on the PCB.
They’re still a bit rattly before lube, and are not as good as the GMK screw in stabs,
but they’re not bad.
As always, I won’t go through soldering again.
I’ll leave some soldering tutorial links in the description if you want to learn how
to solder.
But with keyboards, for the most part it’s just very simple through hole soldering.
I also installed 1.8mm white LEDs for each key.
You can add some LEDs here if you wanted to light up the cat graphic a bit more, but I
found that the underglow LEDs do that just fine.
One thing that I thought was pretty cool were the rubber feet.
They have a hole in them that goes over the screw head.
Little stuff that like is what I enjoy.
For the keycaps, the person wanted backlit caps.
But when dealing with layouts that aren’t just the standard ANSI layout, there’s hardly
anything available.
But we did find these frontlit keycaps for this specific layout.
The font on them are nice, simple, and clean.
And they have some pretty good thickness at 1.4mm.
However the downside of these, are that they are ABS caps that are coated in black and
are laser etched.
So they won’t be the most durable, and they don’t feel the best.
But as always with keycaps, you can change them later.
Here it is with SA Miami Night’s, and they definitely feel a lot better.
Ok so the first thing that I noticed is the underglow.
The underglow lighting is pretty weak and disappointing, and I guess that’s to be
expected with just the 1 row of 7 LEDs on the bottom, that run along the centre, so
they’re not even close to the edges.
At max brightness it’s definitely visible, and is quite tasteful with that subdued look,
but you have to have dim lighting to actually see it.
In normal lighting conditions, it’s very faint.
Back in the labelled photo of the PCB we saw earlier, it mentions that it supports external
light bands.
So I went ahead and bought these LEDs.
These are using the same WS2812B RGB LEDs, and these are addressable.
On the PCB we have 3 labelled pads here.
The LED strip has 5 wires.
2 of which stick out the side, so I cut those off.
And then we’re left with the 3 main wires.
On the packet it came with, it says the Red wire is VCC, white is ground, and green is
data.
And basically we just solder it correspondingly.
Again, I’m not very knowledgeable, but it seems to work, so I’m assuming it’s all
good, as we’re basically just extending the lighting band.
But please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong.
So now we have 15 LEDs in total.
If you want to add more, you would have to address that in the firmware, as by default,
it supports just the 16.
And here’s the PCB all done and ready to go.
We have our LED strip wired up and secured by some hot glue.
It does have an adhesive backing, but there’s no real surface to stick it on, and it also
protects it from potential shorting.
And yep, it makes a huge difference.
Especially since the LED strip is now right at the front where we look at our keyboard,
it’s now super bright.
And even in bright room conditions, it’s very visible.
And with lighting it’s good to have options, as we can always turn it down when we feel
like it.
So yeh, I regard this little mod as a necessity if you’re expecting something from the underglow
lighting, because by default it’s just disappointing.
I’ll leave the link in the description to the LEDs I got, which you can use as reference
to buy it wherever you want to, as they’re available everywhere.
But more on how it looks.
I really like it.
It looks like a strip of light coming out of the bottom of the board, so you don’t
really see it directly, rather you see the reflection of it on the table.
You can go through the different colours which is useful to potentially match a setup, and
we also have our RGB modes, which just consists of RGB cycling, and RGB wave.
From a normal sitting position though, the RGB lighting does peek through the PCB and
plate, in particular through the bottom row because of all it’s layout compatibility.
So maybe that’s something that you can cover up with electrical tape on the PCB.
Although the positive is that we get to see that cat peeking through under the spacebar.
The glass works really well, as it doesn’t really need to diffuse a whole lot anyway.
But yeh, I’m really happy with the glass.
It’s gives that extra bit of heft in comparison to the previous acrylic, and it just feels
more premium, and it’s a unique feature that isn’t very common.
And of course, it looks great with that reflective surface.
So far it’s held up absolutely fine, Again, it is tempered glass, which is toughened glass,
and I’m fairly confident in its durability, providing it isn’t dropped.
But, I’m not willing to test that.
However having this type of design, we don’t have a natural inclination.
So it is a flat 0 degree keyboard which is something you may not like.
So to create the angle we have these aluminium flip up feet.
I regard this to be the weakest point of the case.
They’re not rubber tipped, so it can slide around a bit.
And they’re just not the most stable solution.
When I first got mine, they weren’t even straight.
So that’s a bit unfortunate, because the case itself is stunning.
It’s an extremely simple rectangular piece of aluminium with rounded corners, and chamfered
edges.
We get some healthy bezels at about 10mm, so it definitely holds a presence.
And I just love the flat sides as well.
It just really accentuates its solidness.
The anodised finish is nice and smooth, and mine came in perfect condition.
Again, it’s available or will be available in some other colours.
It is a high profile design, however we still do have quite a noticeable gap between the
actual case and the keycaps.
So I can see the keyswitches a bit from a sitting perspective.
The typing experience is also wonderful.
This utilises a top mount design, so rather than having the PCB and plate secured to the
bottom of the case, we have it secured to the top from the underside, so it’s like
it’s kind of suspended in a way.
This creates a different feeling and sound.
As there’s basically no support in the middle, there is a bit of flex to it, if you actually
push down hard.
This creates a slightly softer feel, and a more even feel, with the bottom out feeling
a tad more pleasant.
I’ve seen some complaints for the XD96 how there’s some flex in the corners, as there
aren’t any screws there, but for this XD84, I didn’t have any issues.
I mean you can make the corners drop a little bit, much like tray mount boards, but only
if you put an unnatural amount of pressure, much like the rest of the case.
Overall I found it to be a very good kit.
The obvious alternative and competition for this would be the KBD75 from KBDfans.
They’re both good in their own ways.
The KBD75 has that different case design, with the integrated angle, angular aesthetic,
and side glow.
Whereas this one has the simpler straight flat design.
And then the KBD75 is tray mount, whereas this is top mount.
The KBD75 PCB is compatible with this case, and that natively supports QMK which is easier
to deal with.
The case is stunning in my opinion, but it relies on the dodgy flip up feet for angle.
The glass diffuser is something quite unique that I haven’t experienced before.
Usually it’s acrylic, but this adds another level of class.
And finally it’s a 75% keyboard.
It’s a great layout is you want the tenkeyless primary functionality with the dedicated arrow
keys, and function row, but in a more compact form factor.
But yeh, for this price range, this is a great choice for a custom 75% keyboard.