Don't really fancy Cooler Master for the price. Tecware Phantom Elite + Gateron Yellow is a very good combo for linear and budget and hard to beat since it's feature packed and affordable. But you can choose brown since you want em. Not something I enjoy. Got better tactile switch than brown though.

They look like standard keycaps to me imo. Tecware confirm standard ANSI

I'm using a RK988 full size keyboard with black switch if you want 3rd option. Very sleek and minimal look as compared to the 2 boards you mentioned and got brown switch too but this keyboard is very basic barebone "keyboard only". I bought it mainly for wireless bluetooth. Other than that it's a basic Single LED backlit keeb

This post has been edited by power911: Sep 16 2020, 02:57 PM

I love both my RK71 and RK988. But they're cheap budget boards that has lottery quality in it.
My RK988 is very smooth and sturdy with prelubed stabs and RK brand black switch. Changed the caps to cheapo pbt SA keycaps and they're butter smooth. Feels like my endgame board already for a fullsize 104 keys.
My RK71 however is a weird mess. Rattly unfixable stabs and weird bluetooth disconnect problems. The Outemu reds I had on them are very scratchy. Plus if you change keycaps on these the right side third row is a bit off with different height. And I personally think RK61 will have more useful function with less keys than the RK71

Again I love both my boards but with my RK71 it's definitely becoming my practice experiment board for modifying switch/stabs in the future if I got money without buying a GK61/GK64

Depends. Some of their new offerings are standard such as huntsman mini and blackwidow v3 pro are standard row. While others that involves weird 1u switch on bottom row or weird 7u spacebar will make you headache with more expensive keycap sets.

Generally gamer branding boards are not popular in the mkb market. If you lurk around people will either recommend you to save money and go tecware phantom elite with choice of special switch (gat yellow for example) or go slightly nicer boards like Akko, Leopold or Ducky for prebuilts with fancy keycaps

As far as I know starter boards to MKB poison is always the GK61/GK64 hotswap 60% board since it's a good empty base to get into the hobby.
I personally haven't gotten one yet but they look like a very nice starter kit with vast options like metal or wood body, 5pin switch compatible means any switch fits, crazy customizable software as well as large community support for any errors you faced.

I'm just a beginner and still surface level in this hobby but you can take it a step further with mods/maintenance such as lubing stabilizers to make any keyboard sounds amazing

Going advanced will be disassembling every switch and lightly lube the rails with Krytox 205g0 for some smooth movements and makes your keyboard sound crazy premium. People even get car soundproof dampening material to dampen the body so it sounds extra solid


Haha thanks for reading through my "brief overview" on what got me started into this hobby.