Im using my first mechanical keyboard and the experience has been great so far but, it is quite loud, especially at night, which cheap mods i can make to make it quieter while i can do something like changing the switches?
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As suggested by the other commenter, o-rings are the best cheap solution.
Another option that works if your keyboard has a hollow body is sound-dampening insulation inside the frame.
I have a Kinesis Advantage that has a ton of negative space inside and simply putting some non-conductive foam inside the shell made a huge difference in the amount of noise it makes
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I feel her pain. It took me a long time to get comfortable with the Kinesis, and even longer to be able to go back and forth with my gaming keyboard seamlessly
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If you are using choc switches, the new ambients are made to be silent, and so far it has worked great for me
Deskmat under the keyboard
Tape and/or foam mods in the case (will change the pitch of the sound, which might disturb less)
O-rings, but these will change how they keyboard feels. I didn’t like them
Foam inserts for keycaps - like o-rings but foam. never tried them
Lubricating the stabilizers - should mitigate some space and enter key rattle
If your keyboard supports hotswap, new switches are a more expensive option.
Edit: The person who invented markdown WYSIWYG text editors is on my shit list
Depends on your board. I had a Redragon K530, here are the list of mods I applied to it in order of price:
- Put foam on the bottom (the type of foams that come with PC components works great), stuff like this
- Added O-rings
- Replaced the switches with Redragon A113 Bullet-QT soft tactile
I think the switches made the biggest impact, but that’s also the most expensive and it requires your board to be hot swappable.
If you are using it on a hard surface, consider placing a mat under your keyboard, it’ll dampen the sound of keystroke.
cheapest and easiest mod is probably o-rings
Keyboard O-RINGS: Installation & Sound Test (good or nah??)
changing out switches can also be relatively easy but can def be more costly
