The R2 RGB would pretty much be your only option for MX Topre unless you wanted to order third-party sliders and swap them onto a normal R2 or 87U.
Reviews of the R2 RGB are mixed and I would agree that it doesn’t sound nearly as nice as the stock Topre without modification, but it’s not also quite so bad as some people make it out. Many folks here have reported good modding results to make it sound good. Most recently here. A foam or sorbothane liner on the inside of any of my housings is also a great idea, and perhaps especially on the RGB.
Got my astrophysical purple Mark II yesterday. It’s awesome, just like my tactical Mark I. My Mark I has been inaccessible since my work was locked down weeks ago, so it’s nice to be typing on a norbauer product again.
Note the dramatic difference between the cool LEDs and white background in my kitchen and the warm incandescents and black background in my office. (warm is much more accurate to my eyes)
I have been collecting purple GMK sets while waiting for this to arrive. I liked Vaporwave the best, it’s in the shots above.
Plum - pretty good match if you don’t mind the yellow in the cream on the alphas
Laser - not a good match - keyset much more blue than astrophysical
Taro - fine, but the dark purple in the mods looks too dark (almost black) against the case
Mitolet - close, but a little bit too red
Vaporwave - my favorite
Violet on Cream - not a good match - keyset more red than Astrophysical
Still waiting on First Love to arrive, have my eye on Frost Witch. Probably going to stop watching Black Lotus now that I’ve seen the astrophysical in person.
Shout out to @ubben for trading me the variable domes I swapped in while I was assembling the case.
Look out for part 2, where I’ll decide between Carbon, Skiidata, Oblivion and Boba Fett on my aperture finish (and 9009 when it arrives).
PS - I may list a ton of GMK sets on classifieds soon
I used Silverstone Case Foam, which I think is 4mm, but the fit was definitely snug. I’m pretty sure the cable and ports for the breakout PCB kit are compressing the foam a bit.
FWIW, I’m currently working on offering die-cut Sorbothane sheets that fit the Norbaforces and nicely navigate around the components that hang off some of the PCBs. Waiting on a quote right now.
@norbauer as usual thank you so much. Do you mind sharing what thickness you plane to use? That way I can try to hack my own until your offering is available. My VHS case and realforce r2 rgb shipped this morning so I’m looking forward to some fun next week
My current plan it 1/10". I would have gone a bit thinner normally, but that’s the smallest thickness they offer. I still need to test, however and am working on getting samples right now.
I am running the R2 RGB on a Mac with no issues. I use Karabiner to customize what I need and everything works great. I was very disappointed with the noise that the R2 RGB made when I first received it. It was rattley and loud. The first thing I did was change the keycaps and that made a much bigger difference than I was expecting. Then I lubed the rails and put in silencing rings from Deskeys. I am now more than happy with the sound. Here is the sound I ended up with. Sorry, I don’t have a recording with all those mods in the Norbauer case yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5W7_DkqM7A&feature=youtu.be
I have two R2 RGBs newly installed into two of these Mark II cases. I have an older variable weight 87U in a Mark I that was my daily driver for almost 2 years of software development on a mac.
Run all of them on macs with no issue. I swap the R2s between mac and PC all the time.
The R2s are definitely a little rattly. For me, the MX stems outweigh the rattle. I considered lubing the stabs, but the rattle doesn’t bother me enough, even though I just took one of the R2’s apart to dome swap it and had lube on hand. I haven’t tried silencing rings because I can’t stand the reduced travel.
I used karabiner for a while, but some Mac OS update (High Sierra?) broke some of the functionality I used, so I switched over to a hasu usb-usb. It has been perfect for me.
hi is there an instruction guide on how to assemble the RF R2 to the norbaforce mk ii?
are there only 2 screws to fix the realforce R2 plate to the case (situated in the upper half area).
I am experiencing a play in the internals when I type on the lower half of the keys which makes the internals to wobble up and down, but when I type on the upper half, its stable.
There are four screws to attach the plate to the housing, so the issue you described would just be due to not yet installing the remaining screws. The lower two attach to the bottom two tabs of the R2 plate; just make sure to use the included washers with those two (and only those two) screws. That is pretty much the only difference compared to the 87U install.
I hope this helps, but just let me know if I can answer any other questions or be of any other assistance.
