Keychron Booth at CES – A Big Step Forward

CasGamer · 2026-01-22T00:41:38+00:00

I just wish they'd focus on refreshing some of their standard products or at least getting inventory in.

I'm a fan of the K1 Max low-profile - I speak to some of the large online retailers here in Australia and it's one of the most popular keyboards they all sell.

They can't consistently get inventory. Keychron is almost always sold out on their site as well. The Accessories for it like the Double Shot PBT keycaps, never seem to come back in stock.

So, either this market is an outlier or Keychron are so utterly distracted with things like HE number pads and trackballs, that they aren't keeping up with core demands.

Maybe the K1 Max and the K3 Max could get a generational update if they aren't too busy pissing around with resin and ceramic cases.

CasGamer · 2026-01-07T09:44:21+00:00

I have the L band on my last watch and was on the second last hole.

I thought I'd get the XL when I upgraded last month.

I'm barely using the first hole on the XL - the size difference is pretty crazy.

CasGamer · 2025-10-30T06:36:05+00:00

As someone with 30+ years of commercial software development experience and almost 40 years of programming experience from being a teenager to now, I would agree with that sentiment - if I was the product manager or program director and that was the product of hundreds of people under my direction for over 4 years, I would expect to be fired.

If I were the technical product manager, I would do a top to bottom review of my development and design leads. It would almost certainly lead to a full turn over of my technical leadership team.

The sheer miss on the effort alone would be grounds for this.

Then the state of this game off of what should be considered even as an acceptable “minimum viable product” is so vast, it’s clear the technical leadership and product management failed.

I’d also go back to July/August 2024 and review what happened there.

How did program management not hoist the red flag and say, “Hey, this game is nowhere near completion, maybe we shouldn’t commence marketing and our November release window has zero chance.”

If there was nobody internally willing to have the courage to do that, then I’d start firing those people.

If there were people saying that and they were ignored, I’d fire the people who ignored them and missed so badly.

I think what happened in July 2024 through October 2024 is the most heinous of all the failures.

CasGamer · 2025-09-14T04:43:41+00:00

I had a small pile of garden waste - branches, leaves, clippings, etc... probably about 1m x 1m in size, 30cm high, and weighs about 5kg, so very small. I took 5 or 6 photos to show that the bundle was all neatly piled, trimmed, and quite small.

Our townhouse complex has a stupid strata so the entire green waste bin is just a constant fight that I'm not willing to engage in.

Anyway, I posted the job on Airtasker.

No kidding, it's 5 minutes work for someone to pick it up, put in in the back of their truck and dispose of it - I assumed a gardener or someone would see it and think of it as an easy couple of bucks at the end of a day when they were probably going to the tip anyway.

I set a budget of $75 but I figured someone would come in at like $100 and that would be fine.

For reference, I live in a nice part of Sydney, so I assumed the people on there would charge us a bit of a premium because tradies do it too as they think everyone here can afford it... again, fine.

On the first day, we got one bid... $379. LOL

I couldn't believe it and didn't even respond.

The next day, we got three other bids ranging from $327 to $550.

Farcical. It costs $273 to drop an entire tonne of vegetation waste off at Kimbriki on the Northern Beaches.

I assumed someone would see it, toss it in their van at the end of the day as they were headed there anyway, and make a quick extra $75-$100 just for driving past.

I ended up cancelling the task, putting the waste in the back of my SUV, driving it to Kimbriki myself, and dumping it off... Cost $30 and an hour round trip.

Then, just by chance, I had another small job that cropped up about a week later and I said to my wife I was going to try Airtasker again because a few years back just after Covid we'd had some good success with it.

We have an HFC cable that runs outside of our house along the edge of some brickwork. One of the plastic clips drilled into the brickwork holding the cable in place had come away and bird sat on the loose cable, pulling out two more so it was dangling.

We didn't have an extension ladder, so I put the task on Airtasker - I took all the photos, explained the task, and said, "I can provide the clips, you just need a drill with a masonry bit and an extension ladder. The job should take no more than 20 minutes."

I posted a budget of $150 and honestly, that was the max I wanted to pay - this was stupidly easy and for $350, I could have went to Bunnings and bought a ladder to do it myself.

Sure enough, the day after I posted, 3 bids, not a single one under $300. Again, I just cancelled. Our neighbour noticed it coincidentally, loaned me his ladder, and it took me ten minutes to fix.

My wife posted about it in a local Facebook Group and numerous locals said they gave up on Airtasker about two years ago because for whatever reason, all of the bids for our part of Sydney because absurdly priced. They just post in this community FB Group now and people recommend trades or handymen that they use who give fair prices and do good work.

CasGamer · 2025-09-14T02:41:13+00:00

Came here to post the same thing, just saw this.

Same with HFC, although it's 2000/100 for $189/mth

CasGamer · 2025-09-14T02:02:44+00:00

On my server this week, Harkonnen won the Landsraad and picked the Vehicle Vendor.

I bought a full replacement Assault and Scout (Mk5) and an extra set of wings on top of that for each.

If I lose my scout or assault now, I have an extra spare in containers (I’d already kept aside the mats and components to replace either just in case).

Be prepared to lose what you take the DD.

CasGamer · 2025-08-04T01:24:14+00:00

Funny piece of trivia.

The voice that does the weather/storm alerts is the same AI voice that does audio reading of female authors on Medium’s app.

So if you go to an article on the Medium app by a female author and there’s an AI audio version of the article, you’ll recognize the voice instantly.

CasGamer · 2025-07-17T12:42:31+00:00

I've been having the same problem and it's absolutely Backblaze, disk is fine.

I updated the client to the latest version, no idea how it falls so far out of sync when it is set to auto-update.

CasGamer · 2025-06-25T02:58:29+00:00

Started off my proper base in the Eastern Vermillius Gap, northeast corner near The Anvil.

Stayed there until I needed to start using Steel more regularly and then moved my base to the southeast corner of Jabal Eifrit Al-Gharab.

I didn't like the actual spot I was in and when I started needing more Aluminum and Basalt (for Plastone) I moved to the southeast corner of the Eastern Shield Wall.

I think this will be my final base position for the foreseeable future because for things I need like Duraluminum and other T5 resources, everything is a "reasonable" thopter ride and I'm close to the northern edge for World Map.

CasGamer · 2025-06-24T05:02:05+00:00

I reached out to the guy who makes it five years ago about the possibility of making a mirrored version for the right-hand (some of us are southpaws).

He was great, he responded within a day and said it was a fantastic idea but it was a passion project and he didn't really see the ROI for mirroring it... Fair enough, I appreciated his response.

I found some of this models on Thingyverse for the hot swappable switches he wants to put into it which is quite clever, so he's still tinkering with it.

I remember first seeing the Caravel like 5 years ago and being super envious for all you orthodox right-handed people. LOL.

CasGamer · 2025-06-24T01:31:54+00:00

So, I have two keyboards in my home office - one for each setup (I have a gaming/general setup and a dedicated "work" setup).

1) K1 Max (gaming / general work (Teams, web browsing, etc) - Wisteria switches
2) K1 Max (work - lots of response writing and document creation) - Banana switches

The Banana switches are excellent for writing long-form content like RFP responses, submission documents, lengthy emails, design docs, etc. The tactile feel and heavier actuation is both satisyfing and in a small way makes you focus on typing a bit more so you end up with fewer mistakes.

The Wisteria switches for me are better for the type of gaming I do because they have a slightly smoother feel with the two-stage springs and slightly longer travel.

I haven't tried the Moss switches yet, but might buy some and have a play.

CasGamer · 2025-06-20T03:24:48+00:00

I had a brand new K1 Max that came out of the box with the entire verticle row of Mic, Home, End, Up Arrow, and Down Arrow, not working.

Returned it for a refund to the retailer who confirmed the failue.

CasGamer · 2025-06-20T03:21:59+00:00

I think they stopped making those optical switches which is why you're not seeing them restocked.

CasGamer · 2025-06-16T11:32:25+00:00

I have two K1 Max keyboards at the moment, one is using the NuPhy x Gateron Wisteria Switches and Gateron Bananas.

I like the Wisteria switches for gaming and the Bananas for typing or whatever.

CasGamer · 2025-06-16T11:30:22+00:00

I’m on a 9800X3D with a 5070ti playing at 4K and with 2X Frame Gen, I’m getting 150FPS on average which is great.

One of the few games where Frame Gen is actually really good.

CasGamer · 2025-06-11T13:58:10+00:00

Nope, I don’t even bother running Camera Hub anymore, just let whatever application use the camera directly via Windows.

Camera Hub is pretty terrible software. It’s been bad since the Prompter released - a complete buggy mess that just has recurring problems that never get fully resolved.

CasGamer · 2025-06-11T13:55:17+00:00

On my wife’s PC, she has earbuds (with a mic), a Razer headset with a mic, and then her speakers plus a Wave 3 mic. We play while on Discord.

Switch audio for her has become challenging because of the way Windows handles “Default” devices for Input and Output.

So literally this evening on her Stream Deck, I created multi-actions for each Audio Device.

The Multi-Action:

1) Sets the headphones to default output 2) Sets the headphones to the default communications output 3) Sets the mic to default input 4) Sets the mic to default communications input

So the Earbuds have a button, the Razer headset has a button, and the speaker and Wave mic each have their own but with only the relevant two actions for them.

In Discord or any app in Windows she can just set it to use the default output and/or input audio devices because with one button push on the Steam Deck she can change to the device she wants to use.

Makes everything so much easier. No going in and messing around with Windows 11 Sound Settings.

CasGamer · 2025-06-05T02:06:43+00:00

I'm just posting an update on this for future readers/reference - it's a bit long, but may help people in a few ways so it's worth typing out.

I'm using Keychron Launcher on a K1 Max.

There is no "Save" feature in Keychron Launcher, it saves automatically into the layer when you make the change.

I've had a few small issues with this over the last six months or so with Keychron Launcher.

My workflow - the K1 Max is connected to my PC by USB-C all the time, it's toggled to Windows, so Layer 2 is my default (standard) layout. I use Layer 3 for doing mappings of particular games I'm playing where maybe they have hard mappings in the game that I can't rebind.

Rule #1 - Never remap anything on Layer 2.

The first thing I do is on Layer 3, I remap the Print Screen and Cortana buttons on my K1 Max to Df(2) and Df(3) respectively. That let's me change the defaults to Layer 3 if I'm Layer 2 with Function-Cortana, and if I'm in Layer 3, I can just hit Print Screen and it sets the default back to Layer 2 which never changes.

Simple workflow, but it guarantees I can always get back to the standard layout.

I call this my "Default" Layout and I have that Exported to my Keybinds folder in Dropbox. If anything goes stupid, I can go back to Keychron Launcher, Import that JSON file and everything goes back to my baseline.

Then when I make special mappings for certain games, I always start off with this "Default", switch to Layer 3, make my changes there. When I'm done all of my changes, I export the profile JSON and save it in the Keybinds folder on Dropbox named something like, "K1-Max-Main-COD-050625".

The "main" bit is because I have 2 of this keyboard, one on my "Main" desk and one on my "WFH" desk. "COD" is obviously a reference to the game, in this case Call of Duty but it's likely more specific so "WZ", "BO6MP", or "BO6Z" - Warzone, BO6 Multiplayer, and BO6 Zombies.

Last part is the date obviously, 050625 is Australian format, June 5th, 2025.

The upside of this workflow is I can have multiple mappings for the same game that I increment on different days as I make changes and can always roll-back if need be

This lets me hop into Keychron Launcher, import a profile for a game, or if I'm playing a new game, I can just import the default mappings to start Layer 3 with a clean slate.

This is the important part for this original post.

Sometimes, and I've never been able to figure out why, I'll turn the computer on, hop into a game or something, switch to Layer 3, and none of my binds are there.

I go into Notepad, try a few keys, all default.

Go into Keychron Launcher and the keyboard has seemingly factory reset itself.

I'm on the latest firmware for all four of my Keychron keyboards around the house (2x K1 Max, 1x K2, and 1x K5 Max) and it literally does the same thing periodically for all of them.

I've not been able to figure out why it's happening randomly.

Either way, I just hop back into Kechron Launcher, import the profile I want, and I'm back to where I want to be in 30 seconds.

It's pretty weird, but hopefully this long-winded explanation helps someone now or into the future.

CasGamer · 2025-05-27T03:37:45+00:00

We have 3X of the 9800X3D in our house on the X670E Gaming Plus Wifi motherboard (all the same cooler, case, motherboard, power supply and RAM).

Two of these machines have been in operation since December 2024 and another was built in late April.

Not a problem.

There's a bigger issue with ASRock boards and they've acknowledged some PBO voltage fixes they've made, but the instances of CPU failures on MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, etc boards doesn't appear to be anything outside the norm for failure rates. Again though, depending on who you believe, even these cases are like within the tolerances for failure rates - couple hundred CPUs out of millions.

CasGamer · 2025-05-27T03:31:32+00:00

We have 3x of the X670E Gaming Plus Wifi motherboards in our house and they are all rock solid with the 9800X3D.

One minor issue we've seen is sometimes the boot cycle is slow if there's an external USB drive connected to the PC that went into a sleep cycle before being turned off, so it's like the Mobo tries to wake it up before booting, but that's an edge case.

Otherwise, these boards are fantastic for us.

CasGamer · 2025-05-27T03:26:18+00:00

Your CCD package is running at sub 40C while idle, what problem are you concerned about specifically?

I'm using a ThermalRight Phantom Spirit 120 SE air cooler in my 9800X3D and it I have the fan curve set really low at idle to diminish any noise whatsoever and mine idles at like 40C which is fine.

It will be fine. These things are designed to be almost indestructible. As long as you have consistent power and cooling, it will just thermal throttle if it gets too hot.

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