HowTo Network emblem How To: Gaming THE HOW TO CO. — EDITION 10
A mechanical keyboard on a dark desk mat lit from behind by a violet strip, a mouse beside it.

SLOT 02 / 08 · KEYBOARDS & MICE

The two things you actually touch.

Everything else in this room is watched or listened to. Slot 02 is the only station you hold.

The board, from above.

THREE WAYS IN

A keyboard is one object that answers three separate questions. The key field decides what a board feels like before you have changed a thing. The socket under a single cap is where that feel can be changed, cheaply, without buying anything else. And the mouse beside it is a different argument entirely — the one piece of gear your aim keeps blaming.

01 THE KEY FIELD How it feels out of the box 02 ONE SOCKET Where feel changes for pennies 03 THE SHAPE IN THE PALM Grip, weight, and your aim
Macro on three keycaps pulled off a board, the bare switch stems standing exposed.

01

Mechanical Keyboards

Size, mounting and material decide almost everything. The switch, which is all anyone talks about, comes fourth.

  • Full size, tenkeyless, 75%, 60% — what you actually lose
  • Why two boards with identical switches sound nothing alike
  • The specs worth reading, and the four that are decoration
OPEN MECHANICAL KEYBOARDS →
A single mechanical switch held above an open socket, its housing translucent.

02

Switches & Mods

The cheapest upgrade in this entire room is a bag of switches and an afternoon.

  • Linear, tactile, clicky — in plain language, without the charts
  • Hot-swap versus soldered, and which one you actually have
  • Tape, foam and lube: which mods change the sound and which are folklore
OPEN SWITCHES & MODS →
A gaming mouse seen from a low front angle on a cloth pad.

03

Gaming Mice

Sensors stopped being the problem years ago. Shape and weight are still the whole game.

  • Matching a shell to your grip, and how to find out what your grip is
  • Why DPI is the least useful number on the box
  • Wireless latency in 2026, and when the cable still wins
OPEN GAMING MICE →
A keyboard photographed straight down, the whole board filling the frame.

Nobody ever adjusted to a board they did not like.

SLOT 02 · KEYBOARDS & MICE
A wide desk at night: keyboard, mouse, pad, a tray of spare keycaps and a puller.

FROM THE CURATOR

Buy the boring one first

The internet will sell you a group buy with an eleven-month lead time before it sells you a sixty-pound hot-swap board you can put switches into tonight. Start with the boring one. Change the switches twice. By the time you actually know what you like, you will have spent less than one keycap set and you will be right.

BY POPPY — CLASS: CURATOR · THEPINKPIPER.GG

You are here.

SLOT 02 / 08 · KEYBOARDS & MICE

01 PC BUILDING 02 KEYBOARDS & MICE 03 CONTROLLERS 04 CONSOLES 05 MONITORS & DISPLAYS 06 AUDIO 07 DESKS & CHAIRS 08 STREAMING

Every station in this room has its own chapter. This one is 02. Back to the room to walk to another.