Before we start I just want to quickly announce that, after a lot of work,
we have finally hit 1 thousand subscribers. We will be doing a giveaway of akko switches,
red inks, lube, and more. I want to thank you guys for your continued support for the channel,
and pushing us to keep doing what we do best. Details for the giveaway
will be in the discord server, so if you haven’t joined already, now is the time.
Welcome back to nearlucid. Today we have a bit of a different video for you.
This is the TH61 by punkston and we’re going to be modding it to its fullest potential. This board
was provided by punkston, but as always that will not affect our opinion and statements in any way.
Upon first impressions, this is really nice packaging for a 50 dollar board. The exterior is
really clean and feels like the experience that would come with something much more expensive.
So this is a 60 percent layout, which I’ve personally never worked with before.
It includes your choice of black, blue, brown, or red optical switches, with a black or white case.
I have been told these are produced by a company working with Punkston so the feel and sound should
be a bit of a hit or miss, we’ll see in a bit. It uses USB-C on the left side. The PCB is hot
swappable and the sockets are north facing. An interesting feature with optical PCBS is that
the switch design allows them to be inherently hot swappable, so if you wind up working with optical,
you won’t ever need to worry about desoldering. Every configuration is the same $50.
The plate is steel and only supports plate mounted stabilizers. The board itself is made
of plastic. Included is a detachable USBC to USB A cable, wire keycap puller, and a switch puller.
I'm glad the keycap puller is the wire type, because the plastic ones are absolutely awful.
Today we have a black case with optical reds, and also a white case with optical blacks.
And before doing anything, let’s perform a stock sound test, right out of the box, unmodified.
I’ve definitely heard optical switches that sounded way worse. It sounds almost clicky,
which is due to the rather significant wobble the switches have in the plate.
Whether this is an issue with the switch itself or the plate is unknown,
but hopefully when I replace them it’ll at least be mitigated.
Before modding, let’s take a closer look into the board, starting with the software.
Punkston boards have their own software to configure RGB and program macros.
It’s alright. Though its design obviously isn’t at the level of higher end prebuilts
like razer synapse or corsair icue, it’s definitely workable, and takes just a few
minutes to get used to. It's fairly responsive and doesn’t seem very buggy, which is great.
The typing experience is really really stiff due to that steel plate and mounting style,
which is a bit jarring coming from the super soft boards I’m used to. Though of course it’s
up to your personal preference, but I don’t find it to be all that comfortable. Offering nonmetal
plates in the prebuilt scene is something that I think should happen a lot more often.
The included keycaps are OEM profile ABS shine through, and have a fairly nice texture
and thickness. They have some sublegends that indicate their secondary functions.
So obviously, with the entirely plastic case, this board is extremely light and cheap feeling.
There's a bit of a lip around the inner assembly, a slight angle to the bottom
half of the enclosure, and the rubber feet on the bottom are not adjustable.
Overall, it's very plainly designed, and doesn’t stick out on a desk in any particularly good or
bad way. After all, it isn’t meant to be competing with higher end prebuilts
or even low end customs. You really do get what you pay for, and for $50,
that means work before you can get to a point that would satisfy a hobbyist.
So with that out of the way, let's get to modding this. The board is bottom mounted,
meaning that the plate screws downward into the case. This makes it stiffer,
but also makes my modding a bit easier, since the assembly is super straightforward.
So first off, we’re going to perform the tempest tape mod. This is a bit of a strange one,
and it involves applying painters tape, or masking tape, to the bottom of the PCB.
presumably, this reflects the sound the PCB makes with the switch, in turn amplifying
the PCB sound over the switch sound. I’ll have to try this mod out a little bit more before I
can recommend you putting tape on your PCB. also dont forget to poke out any holes for standoffs.
It also looks like there’s already foam installed, but I’m going to add some more
because it still sounded quite hollow. I just took this out of my jelly epoch packaging,
and have no idea what the material is. It’s most likely EVA. Otherwise, all
the parts used will be linked in the description. The included plate mount stabilizers are prelubed,
though I’m going to be replacing these with my own lubed everglide pandas. We’re going
to replace the switches with gateron optical yellows, lubing them with krytox 205 grade 0
and filming them with deskeys. Interestingly, despite the switches being north facing, they
seem to not interfere with cherry profile keycaps, so I’m going to throw on black on white hiragana.
Now here’s a sound test with tuned everglide pandas, added case foam,
lubed optical yellows, and GMK.
So I think that sounded significantly better. Even though there’s still a
bit of a hollow and plasticky sound, it has much more tone than the switches used prior.
In the end, I think performing mods like this are definitely worth it.
They can up the sound quality of your keyboards tremendously
and are a great look at what you might be doing in the rest of the keyboard hobby.
I have been told by punkston that higher end keyboard models are coming.
I really hope these aren’t optical since there simply isn’t enough documentation
and proper resource covering optical modding. Along with the larger and heavily tested switch
choice exclusive to the mechanical design, optical is obviously the less sensible choice to many.
But overall, I think this is a good board in terms of value and a great learning
experience for those looking to get into the keyboard hobby by modding a prebuilt.
Thanks for watching this episode of nearlucid. If you liked this video, drop a thumbs up. If
you have feedback or questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. We’d
be more than happy to answer. Also, these videos take lots of work, and by subscribing,
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you can always unsubscribe. That’s all for this video, I’ll see you guys later.