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Teardown
There were nine total screws holding the KM570’s top panel in place, all located on the bottom of the keyboard, including two that were hidden under two of the rubber feet. The final screw was underneath a sticker that says “Do not remove.” (This is just a personal policy, but I don’t take orders from little stickers, so removed it I did.)
The backplate is secured to to the bottom half of the chassis by another six screws. With those removed, you get three pieces: the top panel, bottom of the chassis, and the backplate (with the PCB attached). However, there are two more screws holding the cable assembly in place. This is a simple design: The cable is mounted into a black plastic part that slots into the chassis. Because there is a tiny amount of slack on the cable inside of the chassis, you’d had to break off the thick plastic tabs of the assembly before causing any damage to the cable itself.
There’s a black plastic shield covering part of the PCB, under where the cable lies. It’s unclear what this is for, but we believe it’s there to prevent the braided cable from snagging on the welds on the PCB. If that’s the case, G.Skill gets an extra 50 points for attention to detail.
For the most part, the welds on the PCB look clean and uniform. There’s a small amount of flux residue, but nothing particularly noteworthy. However, a few of the welds were smoothed off on top, missing the prickly nub you usually see.
The metal backplate measures approximately 1.45mm thick. The KM570 uses Cherry stabilizers, and it also has a gap underneath the spacebar.
The MCU looks to be the NXP LPC11U35F, and the LED controller is the Macroblock MBI5042GP.
This could be perfect for work. :-) Don't care about plane jane, if it's solidly built (or made with quality) I'm cool with that, especially since the price isn't stratospheric.
