Page 3 - Specification

Features and Benefits

At first glance one is tempted to dismiss the keyboard as a useless peripheral, a vestigial tail in the DNA of the modern PC.  Apple certainly would like for the keyboard and mouse to die and let the PC evolve with touch screens and virtual keyboards.  Those of us clinging to our mechanical keyboard fetish are either enlightened or curmudgeons.

The RK-9000 then is for the enlightened.  There may be companies like Corsair making boutique and rather interesting keyboards, but the RK-9000 is a workhorse, not flashy or fancy, relied upon to do the task and make you feel good about doing it.  One thing about mechanical keyboards is that they never get in the way of typing, they actually encourage it.  How many times have you had to hit a key twice on a rubber dome keyboard to get it to register?  On a mechanical, I almost never have to hit a key twice.  It always registers.

Lets check out the specifications.

• Cherry MX Blue switch with tactile bump and audible click
• 50 million keypresses
• Full NKRO with PS/2, 6KRO with USB
• Laser etched with infill keycaps
• Detachable USB and PS/2 cables (separate cables included) with gold plating and braided shield
• ISO layout for North America (check for ANSI versions in your locale)

Since there are so many details with the switches and keycaps, these will be covered in its own section on the next page. 

The detachable cables are braided and gold plated.  Rosewill does fall prey to the 'Ensures low latency' gold-plating, but I can't stress enough, it's just for looks.  It looks very nice, though.  The cables themselves are quite stiff, however. 

The previous RK-9000 had very bright blue LED indicators.  The trick was to get a Sharpie and darken the LED.  The new RK-9000 has very restrained blue LED's.  Kinda purdy, actually.

The RK-9000 is a heavy, solid beast, tipping the scales at about 2.5lbs, or just under 1.2Kg. To show the similarities between the Rosewill RK-9000 and a Filco Ninja 104, we have them here back to back, as it were.

Yes, we are Guru3d.com and we void warranties.  On the top is the Filco Ninja, the bottom is the RK-9000.  The external case is nearly the same, with just the label and feet to differentiate them.  The internal PCB and controller are different, of course, but we'll cover that in a bit.  The layout, keycaps, and spacing are exactly the same.  If you have a spare keycaps set laying around for a Filco board, it will fit on the RK-9000.

For comparison sake, we have three keyboards to show, a Leopold FC200R, the Filco Ninja, and the RK-9000.

We'll be raiding the Leopold for the WASD and Esc keys for later.  But now we'll see what's under the hood on the next few pages.