 It's gonna get messy. My wife's keyboard has been acting up lately and that seems like a simple enough fix. I can buy a new one, right? What? No! This is an almost perfectly good keyboard. It's got 102 keys on it that all work just fine. So how hard could it be to replace one of them? Yes, well, it's not that one, it's this one actually. This is getting harder than I thought already. Pop off the key cap, replace the key switch, solder on a new one and bippity snappity. It's off to the races, right? Well, actually, no, it's not quite that simple. This is a pre-built keyboard that doesn't have hot swappable switch sockets. These key switches are soldered, but don't fret. While it might sound a little scary, it's actually pretty easy to replace a dead switch. Just means we're gonna have to get intimate, like I get intimate with our sponsors. Jackery's Explorer 1500 Power Station provides a huge 1500 watt hour capacity with up to seven devices able to charge simultaneously and takes just four hours to get from zero to 80% charge. Get 10% off with code Linus Tech Tips at the link down below. This SteelSeries 7G mechanical keyboard is my wife Yvonne's daily driver at home, where it has faithfully done its duty for many years. And it is kind of old at this point, like baby Linus with frosted tips sold. That's right, this bad boy, this exact keyboard graced ye olde NCIX casting couch over 11 years ago. And look at us, we've both come a long way since then. Since that initial review, it ended up bouncing around at the office before eventually ending up back at my house for Yvonne's work and casual gaming use. And the reason for it is that it has this outstanding, super gently sloped and extra long wrist rest that she finds extra comfortable. That's actually the only thing that she really likes about it because she's not a huge fan of Cherry MX Black mechanical switches. When it launched, it cost over 150 US dollars and had cutting edge features like USB and audio pass-through. Not to mention that it has both a USB and PS2 interface so that you can plug it into, that's right, all the most modern motherboards. Ha ha. The only problem with it is that it's a little tired. And recently the E key has been acting up, only registering key presses about half of the time. Why? Well, that could be any number of things. Dust in the switch, corrosion, a lifted PCB trace. We're not actually gonna know until we crack it open. But before we get to that, we're gonna fire up QMK's keyboard tester and check to make sure that all of the other keys actually work. It's not as bad as one in every two, but I've missed two out of about 20. So I can see why that would be bothering her. Everything else looks good, except she didn't even tell me that this one was broken. No, it's not. It's a function key. That's why I left the SteelSeries logo one on there. And this legend just doesn't have the functions marked. Oh. So it's just the E key. That's the only one we have to replace today. Okay, well then my 102 key count is wrong. It's 103 keys. 103 keys that still work. The best part of that is it takes our entire keyboard repair cost from $2 for two key switches to $1, plus shipping and the materials that we're gonna need to perform the repair. So why don't we walk through what we're gonna need? First things first, you'll need a soldering iron. We're using our Hakko 888D, but you don't need anything this expensive. And in fact, you probably don't need to buy one. Odds are, if you're a big geek, which you are, you're watching this video, you've got a friend or a family member who's got a soldering iron lying around and the odds of you damaging it doing something like this are extremely low. So I would just borrow one. You'll also need a screwdriver or screwdrivers that match the board. In this case, Phillips. Thank you SteelSeries. Some flux core solder, leaded or unleaded. We suggest the latter, if you wanna be more environmentally friendly or the former, if you want it to be a little bit easier to work with, along with some solder wick. Get the name brand stuff from Goot Wick, by the way. Trust me on this one. And some flux for keeping everything nice and clean and flowing. We're using this MG Chemicals No Clean Flux because it comes in this convenient syringe, but you can also go full Rossman and liberally douse the board where needed with any other kind of flux that you like. Keep in mind that you'll wanna clean up any excess after your repair because flux is mildly corrosive. So we're gonna be using, what did you spray this with? Soap. Soap. Okay, so yeah, there you go. Also, you might want a key cap puller and we've also got a solder sucker as well. This is a really, really low quality one and I wouldn't recommend using this one, but basically you preload a little thing and go pop and it theoretically sucks up the solder. I personally find wick works a lot better. Now it's time to snap a quick pick of the keyboard for reference. This is a slightly different layout than I'm used to and to pull off all the key caps so that we can shame my wife for the state of her keyboard. You know what? The F keys are not as dirty. I suspect once we make our way toward the middle of the board, things are gonna get kind of nasty though. Okay, I would strongly recommend not breathing in, ladies and gentlemen. Ah! Ah! Oh! Oh, it's everywhere. Oh gosh. Oh wow, it's really still not that clean. You know what? I think this is as clean as it's getting today. Sorry, hun. Got my screwdriver, soontoblttstore.com. Got my hydration, lttstore.com. Got my work surface here. Okay, it's a mouse pad, but lttstore.com. In addition to the four screws on the bottom, you've got those little plastic tabs that you can accidentally break off if you're not careful. So we're just gonna put our iFixit spudger in here. Just give it a little, oh yeah, there we go. By modern electronic standards, this is very openable and repairable. Oh wow, there's a lot of crud inside it too. Actually, nope, you're off the hook, Yvonne. I think a lot of this is just dried glue or some kind of like manufacturing shmoo. You see that, Colin? It looks like it's like some kind of, maybe it used to be glued together. Or it could be milk. Oh, it's not milk. It's only at the front and it's white. Did you use that keyboard, Linus? No, I never used this keyboard. He knows I'm a cereal eater, but no, this was not me. Our next step is to pull this baby up. So you can see why old mechanical keyboards had such a good reputation for being built like tanks because there's a solid steel plate down the middle of this thing. There we go. Now that's something we're not gonna wanna break here. January 30th, 2008 is the manufacturing date for this board in here for the passthrough USB and passthrough front panel audio. Freakin' love it. And this is about as far as we have to go here. That's it. That's the raw keyboard right there. Got keys and it's a board. One thing we have to be careful of is these pins on the back if we want our front passthroughs to work. They're not super fragile though, so I'm not too worried about doing anything to them. We'll just bend them back if we accidentally bend them. And we could, I think, if we really wanted to desolder every single key switch and then remove the steel plate, we could separate these two layers, but they've been twisted into place with little steel tabs, probably for a reason. And it doesn't look like we have to pull them apart in order to replace just one key switch. So let's go ahead and have a look at which switch is coming out. It's gonna be this one, this guy right here. Okay, let's go ahead and just go, eh, eh. Oh, I hate these things. Here we go, boys. We wick it up. Now this is interesting. Steel series or whoever the REN is apparently soft it to bend over the little stems from the key switches. So I can't just pull it right out without bending these little tabs back. You know what? It's also not quite there in terms of being fully wicked. I think we gotta, yeah, we gotta lift that. Oh! There it is. There's our Cherry MX Blackboard. There's our Cherry MX Black switch. That's right, you've seen all 50 million of your keystrokes. Sorry, buddy. The switch is definitely dead if it wasn't, which it was. Something went right in there. There, see, that's how it's supposed to work. You've probably seen diagrams of this online. Basically you got your stem at the top. That's where your key cap mounts to. That's where you got little rails on the sides so that it slides vertically only. You got your spring. This is what pops up the key switch when you are done pressing it down. This is also what controls how much tension there is, so like how much force is required to push it down. Then right here, you got your contact points. And you know what's funny? I think Cherry told me these are gold plated, but that doesn't really look like gold. Probably worn off by now. I mean, I guess it could be worn off or something. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, sending messages across the Atlantic. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Sorry. Let's grab one that is confirmed actually working and assembled correctly for this next part. Oh wow, yeah, that one is bored. Cause here's how it's supposed to go down. So it goes down, there's your tactile bump, ba-doop, ba-doop, and then there's your contact point right under it. Let's put on a new one, shall we? I keep trying to open this bag and Colin keeps not letting me do it. Can I open this bag yet? I'll allow it now. All right. Did we order these from Digi-Key? Yes we did. All right. These are brand new Cherry MX Black switches. And in theory, and we know this from our tour of Cherry way back, it was a lot of years ago actually, that the design of this could actually be subtly different. They have been revising silently their Cherry MX lineup constantly over the years. But the goal is that whatever changes they make to them, the reliability, the feel, and the sound should all be the same. So theoretically, if I gave this keyboard to someone, not telling them which one has been swapped out with a switch from 10 to 12 years later, they shouldn't be able to tell. I'm gonna pop this on. I do not see any obvious difference in any of the molding, even though we know for a fact that they would have had to redo their molds many, many times since then. Molds don't last forever. Ooh, this little bump here is higher. You know what? I think the logo is higher res. It is. Oh, we need the microscope, Colin. There we go. That's our new key cap. This is our old one. See that? So they're probably just at different stages in their wear. Yeah, that's just an ejector pin mark. So it doesn't matter, but it's interesting that it's changed, right? So they've updated their mold design clearly. Absolutely. This Cherry logo? I am fairly certain that that logo is significantly higher res now. Yeah, it's really hard to tell because of that. I can't hold it steady enough for us to be able to tell, and this mount is just not good enough. We could just trust you. I can't tell to the touch. Good. Let's solder it on then. Yep. First things first, I'm gonna just do what the original assemblers did, and I'm going to bend these little stems over. Now it's time to flux it up. You don't wanna flux up this stage, okay? Sorry, Colin, I can't resist. Yeah, yeah, technically you're supposed to heat the thing, not the solder, but whatever. I can't deal with that. Okay, we've got a ball of solder on there. Boop-a-da-boop-a-boop. Oh, we need more. Boop-a-boop-a-doop-a-boop. Okay. And let's do the same thing again. Whoops. Slipped a little there. I don't think I did any worse than the original assembler. Now it's time for a quick reassembly, like not full reassembly. We're just gonna put the, there we go, the IO pass-through board in place, and let's do a quick test run here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Yay, we did it. Freaking awesome. Now we can put the rest of the board together. I kind of feel like it should get a bit of a better cleaning before we formally put it together. Should we just run it through the dishwasher? No. Colin and I did a video about that. Wow, that was right when you started, wasn't it? It was. It was two years ago. Damn, okay. So one of those keyboards did eventually die. Colin Daly drove it at his desk. Multiple of them, actually. Oh, more than one. Just moisture in keyboard bed, do not do. Point is, we're just gonna get some soap and water and clean the deck, then assemble it. And after some deck swabbing and key cab cleaning and final reassembly, we're ready to show off, da da da da da da, an old keyboard, but one that performs as well as it did when it was new and that will continue to soldier on for at least a few more years. And what a great price, right? Who wants to spend a hundred dollars on a new mechanical keyboard when you can have a perfectly good one for a dollar? Plus a little bit soldering some tools. So all that's left to do is thank our sponsor, NZXT. With NZXT Build, getting a custom built PC is easier than ever. Just set your budget, see how your PC will perform in your favorite games and Build takes care of the rest. Their recommendation engine provides benchmark data for your expected performance at 1080p and 1440p and their FPS estimates are guaranteed to within 10% accuracy. You can customize and upgrade your build from various NZXT case options and RGB lighting setups and they feature transparent pricing with a flat $99 assembly fee in your local currency. Your system will be built and shipped within 48 business hours and all your PC components will be covered under one warranty. They even offer expert live chat for real-time help and troubleshooting and free and easy returns for any system that doesn't meet the Build Engine FPS performance guarantee. So check out NZXT Build today using the link in the video description. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go watch our, should you clean your keyboard in the dishwasher video? Note, by the way, you probably don't wanna do it. Turns out we had corrosion issues. Maybe we could have done a better job of like drying them. I don't know.