You know I love me some budget custom mechs, and with more and more coming out, it shows
the growth of the market with premium features becoming more affordable and accessible.
And yeh I know, this starts at 129USD, so obviously it’s still a lot of money, and
you gotta buy a bunch more stuff to finish it off, but being relative, it is on the low
end.
Also, damn this case is nice.
Has that nice soft touch feel, don’t know what it’s called, not cultured enough.
But it’s nice.
And a big heads up, this is a prototype unit, not the final.
So my contents and the board itself may be different to the final units.
I received 2 plates.
I have a polycarbonate plate, and an aluminium plate in the board itself.
And here it is, the Ikki68 Aurora, which is in group buy until the 10th of this month,
AKA, like now.
Pretty cool looking, and this continues the recent trend of cheaper plastic boards, like
the RAMA Kara, NK65, KBD67 Lite, all that sort of stuff.
However there are a few unique features with the Ikki.
Alrighty, let’s take it apart, with a bunch of hex screws on the bottom.
Here’s the top piece, and the whole case is moulded polycarbonate.
Good to see we have metal inserts, so not just threaded plastic, should be nice and
durable.
And, this is a gasket mount keyboard!
With 16 gasket pieces on the top, and another 16 on the bottom casing.
They’re just friction fit, and are quite small and narrow.
The ones I have are silicone, which are firm and rubbery, however there will also be Poron
available, which is a softer foam.
We also have the case badge, which can be easily removed and replaced with different
ones, which they also offer, which look pretty sweet.
This one is cool though.
And looking at the bottom polycarb piece, and here we are presented with a bunch of
options.
Of course, a heap of silicone here, all of which are optional.
Removing the first piece, and that gives us space for an optional brass weight, to give
it more heft, and it will change the sound a little bit, and we can see the standoffs
there.
And then another small silicone piece which I’m assuming is for the battery.
Because there is a wireless version of the Ikki, which starts at 155USD, however you
will need to supply your own battery.
And then the last and largest silicone piece is just a dampener like the rest.
And depending on what you want, you can leave it or take it out.
Here’s the casing with the rest of the gaskets.
But this has a bit of a twist to it.
Each pair of these gasket pieces are removable.
And these chips are what the plate sits utop.
So, you can decide how many points the plate sits on, and in theory, the less you have,
the more flexible it will be.
You will of course still need some there, and probably a symmetrical setup.
And I guess you wouldn’t want too much flex where the USB port is.
Anyway, for now, we’ll keep them all in.
Here’s the PCB fitted to the aluminium plate.
And I have the Fairbanks hotswap PCB, and it’s one that does allow for various layouts,
including split spacebar.
So we have a bunch of sideways and upside down sockets to allow for that.
Unscrewing the PCB from the plate, and it reveals the mid silicone piece, which too
is optional, depending on whether you want it firmer, or more muted and such.
And the alu plate.
Again proto, not the final, and this one has an ISO enter, amongst other things.
And this is the configuration I went with first, with split spacebar.
But yeh, it was pretty scuffed with the mid silicone piece.
The silicone just didn’t fit with the ISO stab, so stuff it, let’s use the polycarbonate
plate, which allows for everything.
This time, I went with a very standard config, which we don’t often see in smaller form
factors with the full right shift.
But the silicone piece was still not really compatible.
I just chopped off this bit that was interfering with the enter stabiliser, and we good!
Honestly hotswap is such a godsend, it’s just too easy.
The switches I have are Lilacs, which are a JWK linear, and my buddy Hong Hobbies generously
gave me these to try out, the legend.
Lubed and filmed.
But then, I stopped and remembered the DIY logo LED thing, thought I might as well try
and show it.
My silicone piece is just a solid grey, but the final will be white for the light to shine
through.
So I’ll just cut the silicone, no worries.
Then I gotta diffuse it, so I just cut some thin white cardboard.
And you get something like this.
Here’s an example of what they did.
You can do something like that, which is a little difficult by hand, or you can do the
inverse way where you just like draw something in black.
Alrighty, that’s all done.
Now we can put it back together, and we come to the next issue.
If we look closer at the case, The gaskets are higher than the threads, and being silicone,
there’s hardly any compression, if any.
And this is the same for the bottom.
So, when we screw the two halves together, being plastic, it bends at these points like
so.
And it’s not that I’m overtightening or something, it’s just generally you screw
it all the way in.
But, with this, you have to stop when you feel a bit of resistance, otherwise, it’ll
deform.
I suspect with poron gaskets, being a foam, it won’t be as bad because it compresses.
But yeh, we’re kinda left with a bit of a gap.
Keycaps!
Honestly, Mint, is a bit tough to match, not that there’s any rules.
But the case is translucent, and does allow for a complete basic standard layout, so I
thought why not use one of these super cheap translucent keycap sets that I have.
These are ridiculously cheap, like 6 bucks plus shipping on Aliexpress, probs can get
em cheaper elsewhere.
And it’s kinda staggering when you think about just how much we spend on keyboard stuff.
Like all the Ikki68 Aurora vids out right now probably have a GMK set on them, or similar.
Nothing wrong with that, just an interesting thought that you can get like 20 of these
for one premium keyset.
But me being me, I had this sitting in front of me for a while, and I thought it looked
really cool and all, but also it could be better.
And honestly I hate myself sometimes, because this groupbuy is ending very soon, and this
straight up took me a good while, but whatever, gotta do it.
And finally, here it is, the Ikki68 Aurora Mint edition custom mechanical keyboard.
Damn, what a build, I did so much to get to this point.
But look at that.
I’m happy I went that touch further, because yeh, it looks pretty good to me.
Haven’t really seen something like this, this sort of combo, especially the keycaps.
I tried and guessed with the legend colours to somewhat match the case.
And translucent keycaps like this are pretty much always blank.
I’ve seen Tai Hao have something like this, but being doubleshot, you still have that
opaque layer.
Also, because these are custom and I can do what I want, I decided to theme it a little
bit on Red Velvet’s Joy, since I won’t do a dedicated episode to her, and I’ll
eventually have a keyboard for each member.
And it just makes me love the board more.
I love the colour of the case too, it just brightens up your desk, and lends well to
translucent plastic.
And I love this aesthetic where we can see through and into the case.
We can see the metal standoffs here, and with all the gasket pieces, there’s a bunch of
ribbing around the case.
Otherwise it’s quite a simple shape, sizeable bezels, looking at the side profile, it’s
clean, with a 6.5 degree incline, nice and comfortable.
We do have this interchangeable case badge.
I will eventually change it to maybe have Joy’s signature to tie the whole board together.
And then the LED logo thingo, I didn’t do the greatest job, I think it’s letting too
much light through being a big shape, so I guess I’ll change that too.
But that’s a feature you don’t need to use.
I’m a fan of this kind of 65%, which is the same as the Varmilo VA68 or Miya.
It’s a bit wider, but it does allow for that long right shift, and 1.25u keys on the
bottom row, which let me use this keyset.
But then it has so many options even with hotswap, which we don’t often see.
There’s just about a split option for whatever.
So split spacebar, backspace, shift keys, all of that, so, you do you.
Alrighty, let’s give it a listen.
I’ll start with the default config, and then try to remove some of the gasket chips.
Awesome!
First of all, good work on the switches mate, they feel great, and I’m a fan of how the
board feels and sounds with all the configs I tried.
Remember, just the polycarbonate plate here, and by default it already had a good amount
of flex.
The bottom out was quite pleasant, not overly clacky or harsh.
There’s silicone packed everywhere here, so it has that typical dense and contained
sound and feel.
Removing the side gasket chips, I honestly don’t think I felt or even heard much of
a difference.
But then removing the middle gasket chips definitely brought in more thock to the spacebar,
and of course how the spacebar sounds is a huge part of how the keyboard sounds when
typing.
But overall, it was a slightly thockier and deeper sound, and a slightly softer bottom
out.
Then just having the side gaskets, I dunno, it sounds pretty similar to me.
Maybe a touch deeper, and in theory there should be more flex towards the middle, but
yeh I dunno, it was very similar, let me know if you can hear a difference.
And then finally I removed the case silicone pieces that go under the PCB, and that made
a huge difference.
Much thockier, more depth, and you can hear the room it has, a bit hollow as expected.
The sound did spill a little bit onto the table, whereas the other configs were all
very much contained within the keyboard.
This also has the most flex, and again you want to be careful with the USB port bending
like that.
But I really did enjoy this config.
For me, I reckon maybe the third configuration was a pretty good balance.
Maybe that, but without the case silicone pieces.
But I definitely feel that at least removing the gasket chip underneath the spacebar really
brings out the thock and depth, and I like that.
But yeh, this is just what I tried.
There’s so much more that you can do, more stuff with the gasket chips, Poron instead
of silicone gaskets would be different.
Removing the silicone piece between the PCB and plate.
The case silicone pieces.
Different plate materials.
And adding a brass weight.
All of this stuff will change your experience.
But the encouraging thing is that the default setup was good, I liked it, and everything
after that I liked even more.
And that’s the Ikki68 Aurora.
There was a lot of work put into this board, and many issues tat I can put down to being
a prototype unit, like the cooked silicone piece, the cooked PCB, the alu plate, all
that stuff is fine, it’ll be fixed.
The screwing together of the case may need to be looked at though.
But otherwise, I love the customisability of the board, how you can personalise the
look of it, and of course the removable gasket pieces is cool, always good to see something
a bit different.
And finally back to the start, this is a budget custom, this run however will be cheaper than
the following runs, and you know they will run way more because these moulds cost money.
And it’s value.
Personally, I’ve tried the NK65 and RAMA Kara for these sorts of boards.
I felt like the NK65 wasn’t too far off a kinda normal prebuilt in feel, but the value
is unreal with that..
And the KARA has the HHKB layout which isn’t for everyone, like myself, and I personally
prefer how the Ikki sounds and feels, personally.
So I think it’s a real solid option, and I’m keen to get a wireless PCB in here,
so I might actually use it.
Love you Joy, and thank you.