- last edited on by
ROGBot
DISCLAIMER: This will void your warranty. Don't attempt unless you know what you're doing. I take no responsibility if you break something.
Hello everyone. I've just modded my keyboard backlight color to purple and decided to share. It looks pretty nice, and takes a couple of hours of your time (if you go slowly and carefully) and a few pounds only (or none).
Be very careful when you take apart the laptop, there are a lot of screws of various sizes. You will NOT remember where they all go, so arrange them in a way that will help you remember how to put the whole thing back together.
Without further ado, let's get to it. As with any electronics, ground yourself in case you're statically charged (touch a metal electrical appliance, like a washing machine). If you have anti-static gloves, great. I personally don't.
Part 1: Prerequisites.
You will need translucent plastic, scissors, translucent scotch tape, screwdrivers (duh). You can use whatever is handy for the plastic, I personally bought a stack of binder dividers from an office supplies store. You can find them anywhere, and they're really cheap. The more colors you can get, the more options you will give yourself. Here's what I got:
Part 2: Bottom side.
Make sure your backlight is turned on. Shut down, unplug from power, take out battery, remove the bottom panel (1 screw). Take out the rubber plugs and unscrew all the screws under them. They are easy to see, you can't miss them. There are however a few tricky screws you will also need to tackle. Take a look:
The red ones you just unscrew. The left green one holds the optical drive bay. Unscrew it, then slide the optical drive out. This will reveal 3 screws (also in green, not visible on pic) previously hidden. Remove those. You're now done with the bottom side. If you've been diligent like I suggested, your screws will be arranged like this:
Part 3: Remove speaker panel (the bit sticking out behind the screen).
Flip the lapto over, so it's facing you as if you're working on it, with screen closed. Grab hold of the panel behind the screen and pull up. It should come off really easy. DO NOT pull all the way, as there are wires connected to it:
The left jack (red highlight) is what you want to detach - it's the speaker wires. Pull out the jack, here's a nice closeup pic for you:
Part 4: Remove the keyboard panel.
Look at the following pic:
The red highlight is where you should remove a screw. There's one more on the other side, take that off too. Now, you can lift the bit that you just unscrewed with your fingers until it pops. I've tried to show this here:
Note that there's a gap between the chassis and the keyboard panel now. Do the same on the other side. Use your fingernails and slide them along the gap so the plastic clips holding the panel all pop. This will result in a loose keyboard panel (basically the whole top section of the laptop). Lift it very slightly and slide it towards you NO MORE THAN AN INCH (the panel is still connected to the motherboard via ribbon cables, you don't want to break them):
Once at this stage, lift the screen side up so you can see and reach the 4 ribbon cables. I've tried to take a pic from the side:
Unplug the two red, then the two green ones (colors are referring to my highlight).
*** IMPORTANT. These are not unplugged via force. The white plastic connectors on the motherboard all have a black latch. You open the latch upwards, then the cable comes out. When you reconnect them back later on, insert the cable and close the latch. ***
Remove the keyboard panel and put it aside.
*** OFFTOPIC - Here is a picture showing you where the WiFi card (red) and the remaining two RAM slots (green) are:
Part 5: Remove the backlight led layer from the keyboard.
Take the laptop and put it aside, you don't need it for now. Flip the keyboard face down, like this:
The backlight led layer is taped/glued to the bottom of the keyboard. We need to untape/unglew it. Start by removing the big red rectangle piece (go slowly, no rush), then the small red pieces (easy). The keyboard cable (green) is also taped, untape it (but do NOT pull it out, it's not meant to be pulled out). Put the big square piece aside, sticky side up. You're now at this stage:
Unstick the long rectangular red piece (go slowly) and the corner red piece (easy). Once you do this, you are ready to start peeling off the backlight layer. Start in one corner, and peel off the short side (screwdriver is in there only to hold it up while I snap the photo):
Then continue peeling:
Until finally it comes off:
Continued in next post.
Hello everyone. I've just modded my keyboard backlight color to purple and decided to share. It looks pretty nice, and takes a couple of hours of your time (if you go slowly and carefully) and a few pounds only (or none).
Be very careful when you take apart the laptop, there are a lot of screws of various sizes. You will NOT remember where they all go, so arrange them in a way that will help you remember how to put the whole thing back together.
Without further ado, let's get to it. As with any electronics, ground yourself in case you're statically charged (touch a metal electrical appliance, like a washing machine). If you have anti-static gloves, great. I personally don't.
Part 1: Prerequisites.
You will need translucent plastic, scissors, translucent scotch tape, screwdrivers (duh). You can use whatever is handy for the plastic, I personally bought a stack of binder dividers from an office supplies store. You can find them anywhere, and they're really cheap. The more colors you can get, the more options you will give yourself. Here's what I got:
Part 2: Bottom side.
Make sure your backlight is turned on. Shut down, unplug from power, take out battery, remove the bottom panel (1 screw). Take out the rubber plugs and unscrew all the screws under them. They are easy to see, you can't miss them. There are however a few tricky screws you will also need to tackle. Take a look:
The red ones you just unscrew. The left green one holds the optical drive bay. Unscrew it, then slide the optical drive out. This will reveal 3 screws (also in green, not visible on pic) previously hidden. Remove those. You're now done with the bottom side. If you've been diligent like I suggested, your screws will be arranged like this:
Part 3: Remove speaker panel (the bit sticking out behind the screen).
Flip the lapto over, so it's facing you as if you're working on it, with screen closed. Grab hold of the panel behind the screen and pull up. It should come off really easy. DO NOT pull all the way, as there are wires connected to it:
The left jack (red highlight) is what you want to detach - it's the speaker wires. Pull out the jack, here's a nice closeup pic for you:
Part 4: Remove the keyboard panel.
Look at the following pic:
The red highlight is where you should remove a screw. There's one more on the other side, take that off too. Now, you can lift the bit that you just unscrewed with your fingers until it pops. I've tried to show this here:
Note that there's a gap between the chassis and the keyboard panel now. Do the same on the other side. Use your fingernails and slide them along the gap so the plastic clips holding the panel all pop. This will result in a loose keyboard panel (basically the whole top section of the laptop). Lift it very slightly and slide it towards you NO MORE THAN AN INCH (the panel is still connected to the motherboard via ribbon cables, you don't want to break them):
Once at this stage, lift the screen side up so you can see and reach the 4 ribbon cables. I've tried to take a pic from the side:
Unplug the two red, then the two green ones (colors are referring to my highlight).
*** IMPORTANT. These are not unplugged via force. The white plastic connectors on the motherboard all have a black latch. You open the latch upwards, then the cable comes out. When you reconnect them back later on, insert the cable and close the latch. ***
Remove the keyboard panel and put it aside.
*** OFFTOPIC - Here is a picture showing you where the WiFi card (red) and the remaining two RAM slots (green) are:
Part 5: Remove the backlight led layer from the keyboard.
Take the laptop and put it aside, you don't need it for now. Flip the keyboard face down, like this:
The backlight led layer is taped/glued to the bottom of the keyboard. We need to untape/unglew it. Start by removing the big red rectangle piece (go slowly, no rush), then the small red pieces (easy). The keyboard cable (green) is also taped, untape it (but do NOT pull it out, it's not meant to be pulled out). Put the big square piece aside, sticky side up. You're now at this stage:
Unstick the long rectangular red piece (go slowly) and the corner red piece (easy). Once you do this, you are ready to start peeling off the backlight layer. Start in one corner, and peel off the short side (screwdriver is in there only to hold it up while I snap the photo):
Then continue peeling:
Until finally it comes off:
Continued in next post.
Part 6: Test colors and prepare color mod.
You can now plug in the led layer alone in the motherboard and test the various colors. Here's a pic (red is jack to plug it in, green is the power key to turn laptop on). DO NOT use your finger for the power button, but a plastic tool (I used a pen):
The color is actually bluish-white, not pure white. White balance is off in my pic. In any case, take your plastic dividers (or whatever) and check what they'd look like:
It's not a very exact science, as the colors are slightly off once you put the whole thing together, but will give you a good idea. Now, you have to cut out and piece together a layer from the plastic. I opted out for a single color, however this is where you can get creative. You can make a separate color for the F keys, for the arrows, numpad, WASD, whatever you want. Piece them together with clear scotch tape and put on top of the led layer. Here's mine:
I was going for purple, so pink + the bluish white original light was going to give me just that. Blue or green plastic will probably be largely unaffected color-wise. Here is a video that does the same for an Asus G73 (this video gave me the idea, actually) - clicky - he shows off various colors and stripes, so you can use it as inspiration.
Part 7: Put it back together.
Before you put everything back together, note that your plastic layer is covering some holes in the led layer. You'll need to punch holes in the exact spot. I used a small screwdriver, then a larger one after it. Here's a pic:
Put the whole thing back where it belongs:
Then re-tape everything again:
In the last picture, the large square tape piece is not yet replaced - don't forget it. Plug the 4 ribbon cables back in the motherboard, re-seat the keyboard panel so it clicks all around the edge. This may be a good time to turn the laptop on to quickly check if keyboard/mouse work correctly (if not, re-seat their cables). Then do all steps we did earlier in reverse and screw everything back together.
Part 8: End result.
I took these in a pitch-dark room with a non-VR lens on the Nikon, so excuse the poor focus/high ISO noise.
Good luck if you go ahead and do it, and of course post pics if you do. Enjoy!
You can now plug in the led layer alone in the motherboard and test the various colors. Here's a pic (red is jack to plug it in, green is the power key to turn laptop on). DO NOT use your finger for the power button, but a plastic tool (I used a pen):
The color is actually bluish-white, not pure white. White balance is off in my pic. In any case, take your plastic dividers (or whatever) and check what they'd look like:
It's not a very exact science, as the colors are slightly off once you put the whole thing together, but will give you a good idea. Now, you have to cut out and piece together a layer from the plastic. I opted out for a single color, however this is where you can get creative. You can make a separate color for the F keys, for the arrows, numpad, WASD, whatever you want. Piece them together with clear scotch tape and put on top of the led layer. Here's mine:
I was going for purple, so pink + the bluish white original light was going to give me just that. Blue or green plastic will probably be largely unaffected color-wise. Here is a video that does the same for an Asus G73 (this video gave me the idea, actually) - clicky - he shows off various colors and stripes, so you can use it as inspiration.
Part 7: Put it back together.
Before you put everything back together, note that your plastic layer is covering some holes in the led layer. You'll need to punch holes in the exact spot. I used a small screwdriver, then a larger one after it. Here's a pic:
Put the whole thing back where it belongs:
Then re-tape everything again:
In the last picture, the large square tape piece is not yet replaced - don't forget it. Plug the 4 ribbon cables back in the motherboard, re-seat the keyboard panel so it clicks all around the edge. This may be a good time to turn the laptop on to quickly check if keyboard/mouse work correctly (if not, re-seat their cables). Then do all steps we did earlier in reverse and screw everything back together.
Part 8: End result.
I took these in a pitch-dark room with a non-VR lens on the Nikon, so excuse the poor focus/high ISO noise.
Good luck if you go ahead and do it, and of course post pics if you do. Enjoy!
