Inexpensive Mechanical keyboard

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mellojoe

Gawd
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Mar 19, 2007
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703
Do they exist? What are my options?

Obviously, you get what you pay for, but what is the current budget king?

Alternatively, what is just a good keyboard for gaming (FPS style) that doesn't cost an arm-and-a-leg?
 
I got a CM Storm Quickfire Stealth for about $70 I think.

Definitely look at what switches you want but imo the CM storm line is very nice for the bottom end price line. Cherry Red is the cheapest, but I kind of wish I had sprung for blues or browns I want a tactile click.
 
It will be really hard to beat a CM Storm in terms of price.

For FPS gaming I would recommend a Red or Brown switch. Blue's are too tactile for quick FPS keypressing and Blacks will be too stiff.

Get a 75% or 60% keyboard. (Tenkeyless or smaller) as you do not need the numpad for gaming.

Once I switched to a TKL keyboard I cannot go back. The reason is my hands are closer together when gaming. With a full-size keyboard your hands are spread far apart and I now find it uncomfortable.

CM Storm Quickfire TK is a solid TKL board. For a few more bucks anything from Ducky is top-quality. Filco is nice but IMHO overpriced.

Vortex Keyboards and KBT (related companies) offer good boards (the Poker II is an awesome 60%).

If you want LED Backlighting options shrink. The CM Storm has a TKL backlit and the Ducky Shine 3 TKL is awesome (But REALLY hard to find). Ebay and Qtan are your best bet
 
cm boards often go on sale for 50-70 ish if you factor in rebates. the rosewill RK boards are already pretty low and sometimes drop with newegg codes.

I have a TKL CM board and it's served me pretty well. Doesn't feel as solid with the keypresses, but I can only tell since I go back and forth with my DAS
 
sylon said:
I got a CM Storm Quickfire Stealth for about $70 I think.

Definitely look at what switches you want but imo the CM storm line is very nice for the bottom end price line. Cherry Red is the cheapest, but I kind of wish I had sprung for blues or browns I want a tactile click.
Click to expand...

browns are very nice for fps. when your holding down on the key you can lift the pressure youre putting onto it and feel when its unclicked.
 
WinSomeLoseNone said:
It will be really hard to beat a CM Storm in terms of price.

For FPS gaming I would recommend a Red or Brown switch. Blue's are too tactile for quick FPS keypressing and Blacks will be too stiff.

Get a 75% or 60% keyboard. (Tenkeyless or smaller) as you do not need the numpad for gaming.

Once I switched to a TKL keyboard I cannot go back. The reason is my hands are closer together when gaming. With a full-size keyboard your hands are spread far apart and I now find it uncomfortable.

CM Storm Quickfire TK is a solid TKL board. For a few more bucks anything from Ducky is top-quality. Filco is nice but IMHO overpriced.

Vortex Keyboards and KBT (related companies) offer good boards (the Poker II is an awesome 60%).

If you want LED Backlighting options shrink. The CM Storm has a TKL backlit and the Ducky Shine 3 TKL is awesome (But REALLY hard to find). Ebay and Qtan are your best bet
Click to expand...
Regarding the bolded portion:
Unless you absolutely need a fully backlit keyboard, I would not recommend the CM Storm Quickfire TK, it is made by a different (lower quality) OEM supplier than some of the other CM Storm Quickfire keyboards such as the Quickfire Rapid and Quickfire Stealth.
The Quickfire Rapid, XT, and Stealth are built by Costar, the same OEM that makes those Filco boards you said are nice but overpriced :D
This is a great thing for those of us that like high quality keyboards at reasonable prices.

There's really no competition in terms of quality at the price point of the CM Storm Quickfire Rapid, Stealth or XT.
 
Kueller said:
Regarding the bolded portion:
Unless you absolutely need a fully backlit keyboard, I would not recommend the CM Storm Quickfire TK, it is made by a different (lower quality) OEM supplier than some of the other CM Storm Quickfire keyboards such as the Quickfire Rapid and Quickfire Stealth.
The Quickfire Rapid, XT, and Stealth are built by Costar, the same OEM that makes those Filco boards you said are nice but overpriced :D
This is a great thing for those of us that like high quality keyboards at reasonable prices.

There's really no competition in terms of quality at the price point of the CM Storm Quickfire Rapid, Stealth or XT.
Click to expand...

While the TK is made by a different company the quality doesn't seem to be noticeably lower than any of the Costar board in their line up, keycap quality aside (this is judging by forum reviews and pcb photos). The company that makes the TK lineup is still an unknown company (iirc), which also makes Corsair's boards and a handful of others that seem to be of similar build quality to many of Costar's boards.

The only real mechanical lineup that has had glaringly bad issues and reviews making them unworthy of their price point have been the older iOne boards mostly (iRocks really weren't so great either, but they seem to do well enough to stay under the "shitty" radar for now). There are others out there with issues, but boards like the TVS Gold are so cheap that you'd have to be silly not to expect it to have some kind of problem eventually.
 
Skull_Angel said:
While the TK is made by a different company the quality doesn't seem to be noticeably lower than any of the Costar board in their line up, keycap quality aside (this is judging by forum reviews and pcb photos). The company that makes the TK lineup is still an unknown company (iirc), which also makes Corsair's boards and a handful of others that seem to be of similar build quality to many of Costar's boards.

The only real mechanical lineup that has had glaringly bad issues and reviews making them unworthy of their price point have been the older iOne boards mostly (iRocks really weren't so great either, but they seem to do well enough to stay under the "shitty" radar for now). There are others out there with issues, but boards like the TVS Gold are so cheap that you'd have to be silly not to expect it to have some kind of problem eventually.
Click to expand...

I speak from direct experience. I have been using a Quickfire Rapid (QFR) for a couple years now, but I recently ordered a Quickfire TK (QTK) and was disappointed in it's build quality compared to the QFR. The casing plastic is not as sturdy feeling on the QTK, the edges are sharp rather than nicely rounded on the QFR. The key stabilizers for space/shift/return/backspace ect. are not as nice as on the QFR.

None of those are deal breaking though...the deal breaker is that at low brightness levels the QTK suffers from PWM-dimming flicker, it's not noticeable when I look directly at the keyboard, but when I am looking at my monitor and the keyboard is in my peripheral vision the flickering is distracting.

It's not that any of the other keyboards mentioned in here are bad, the Costar built CM Storm Quickfire's are just such an incredible value for the money I can't in good conscience recommend anything else. For $60-$100 (depending on sales/rebates and full size or tenkeyless) you get a keyboard you'd have to spend $150-$200 to compete with.
 
Kueller said:
It's not that any of the other keyboards mentioned in here are bad, the Costar built CM Storm Quickfire's are just such an incredible value for the money I can't in good conscience recommend anything else. For $60-$100 (depending on sales/rebates and full size or tenkeyless) you get a keyboard you'd have to spend $150-$200 to compete with.
Click to expand...

Understandable, personally I won't recommend any backlit mech. lineup aside from Ducky's (even Deck's some times), but there are other choices that "aren't bad"; I do agree that the QFRs are amazing budget boards, very hard to quantifiable beat with anything of a similar feature set.


Hamm3r said:
CM doesn't make a backlit tenkeyless, do they?
Click to expand...

I want to say that the TK is their only backlit sff offering atm (although not tkl); I also want to say that there is a backlit tkl board on the drawing board, but I can't remember if that info came straight from a rep. or just speculation, sorry.
 
Skull_Angel said:
I want to say that the TK is their only backlit sff offering atm (although not tkl); I also want to say that there is a backlit tkl board on the drawing board, but I can't remember if that info came straight from a rep. or just speculation, sorry.
Click to expand...

No, that's exactly what I thought as well. So I'll just wait until next week and get the Shine 3 like I had originally planned.
 
Yeah, the TK is backlit and the about 1.25 inches longer than the QFR
 
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this i-rocks model is lower price nice,$25.00us shipped:

I-Rocks Black 104 Key USB Wired Backlit Gaming Keyboard - Orange LED (KR-6820E-BK)
 
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