Twitch Streamer Commissions Custom $3,500 Mechanical Keyboard

Twitch Streamer Commissions Custom $iii,500 Mechanical Keyboard

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We're no strangers to expensive mechanical keyboards around here, only a popular Twitch streamer just showed all his subscribers how deep the keyboard rabbit hole can go. Turner "Tfue" Tenney just got his hands on his new custom keyboard, which is a one-of-its-kind cosmos that price him about $3,500.

The project came to be when Tfue met Tae Ha Kim, who builds fully custom keyboards under the proper noun Taeha Types. Kim doesn't consider himself a designer but rather a middleman who can find and gather the necessary components. Sometimes that means getting his hands on difficult-to-detect components like Norbauer cases, simply other times he works with a manufacturer to brand a new component from scratch.

For Tfue's keyboard, Kim worked with a custom manufacturer chosen Keycult to get the instance and PCB. Keycult makes keyboards in very minor batches, but it also accepts commissions that start around $2,000. This case was somewhat more than because it's fully custom, featuring Tfue'southward handle milled into the bezel and a fancy imperial-bluish anodizing task. Having seen a lot of custom keyboards in my time, I can say I've never seen anything quite like it.

Most custom mechanical keyboards come from suppliers that manufacture them in modest batches. A "group buy" lets enthusiasts band together to reach the necessary minimum order quantity (MOQ) — information technology'southward like a pre-society except the buyers accept all the adventure instead of a retailer. The keyboard commissioned by Tfue is not necessarily better than those keyboards, but it is much more rare. Therefore, it'southward astronomically more expensive.

The board has many of the features you'd come across in other custom keyboards. It uses the popular 60 percentage form factor, which ways no defended arrows, f-row, and function keys. It as well has NovelKeys Cream switches, which are a medium-weight linear switch that'southward go quite popular among enthusiasts. The entire housing is POM plastic, which is a "self-lubricating" material that allows for smoother motility. These switches are expensive ($6.50 for 10), and they're often out of stock. On peak of the switches, Kim used a keyset called GMK Striker, which was only available in a express run last yr for about $150.

Put that all together, and you have a $3,500 keyboard. Clearly, the nearly spendy part was the custom housing. That's the price of having something truly custom — and then many of the things we buy are affordable simply because they're manufactured on a large scale. No one else has Tfue's keyboard, though.

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