Over on Twitter, the official global account for Asus ROG posted a semi-mysterious image of something that will be announced next week. At a glance, it certainly looks like a keyboard switch, so let’s call it a keyboard switch.
What makes this intriguing is Asus ROG links out to a countdown timer, to 2:00 pm ET on September 1. That just happens to be the same day as Nvidia’s upcoming GeForce Special Event, where the GPU maker is widely anticipated to reveal its next-generation graphics cards based on Ampere.
Asus also has planned an event for that same day: the Meta Buffs launch event. You’d assume this would be the company’s chance to announce its own third-party Ampere cards, but perhaps it has more in store for gamers.
Keyboards and graphics cards don’t have much in common, other than both are used with a PC. Announcing a keyboard switch on the same day feels like an odd decision, as it will be overshadowed by Nvidia’s new GPUs.
Interestingly enough, there’s a separate countdown timer for a “Built for Brilliance” event on September 2, at 1:00 pm ET. The background imagery on that countdown timer is more consistent with the background on the teaser image.
In any event, we can make out the ROG logo on the key switch, perhaps suggesting this will be a custom design and not a Cherry MX switch. The central stem also does not appear to be in line with a Cherry switch, and bears a striking resemblance to Logitech’s Romer-G switch. Some users over in the Twitter thread believe it could be a hot-swappable switch, although that will inevitably come down to the final keyboard PCB these switches find their way into.
Our best guess is that Asus is preparing its own optical switch, as there are no visible metal pins protruding from the underside of the pictured casing. However, that may be simply an oversight with this particular render.
I’ve reached out to Asus in an attempt to pry some information about the switch, and will update this article when/if I hear back.