High quality mechanical keyboard with backlighting?

[Guest]

Hi, I've been looking around at different keyboards and information on keyboards and it looks like I'm wanting to try out the mechanical route for once.

What I'm trying to find:
PS2 port/Active adapter
Backlighting
Cherry MX black or MX red switches

Basically it looks like the Steelseries 6g v2 fits the bill so well. I really wish it had backlighting however (if I can't find one, this would probably be the one I'll be going for). The only other keyboard I can find is a Deck Legend, however because of the LEDs it looks like the price shoots up pretty high.

One last thing I'd like to ask, an active "adapter" seems like it would slow down some sort of function as with any other adapter you would use on a keyboard. True/false? Because the steelseries 6g v2 comes with a USB>PS2 adapter, it almost seems as if that should be reversed (if that's even possible?) given the pros of PS2 over the cons.

 

[ssddx]

a good mechanical keyboard is not cheap. you can easily spend $80 to near $200 for one. quite a few of the ones i'd recommend do not have backlighting at all.

probably the most beast of the mechanical keyboards would be the unicomp customizers which are 90% copies of the original ibm model m. the other keyboards that come to mind are the ones made by das. both do not feature leds.

i've heard of deck. apparently they have a bit of a following but i cannot say too much about them. the price may be due to popularity or how they are built. if there is a led under each key, it may be worth the price.

i know the razer keyboard has leds and is mechanical but the led lighting is uneven and the surface texture will wear off. razer is only a middle-level manufacturer with a high level price tag.

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as far as adapters what do you mean by active? do you mean the type which has a big box and some circuitry inside?

i've used USB to PS/2 non-active adapters as well as PS/2 to USB non-active adapters and i've noticed no issues. why would you want an active adapter? the only times i've seen something like that being required was for some old keyboards like the model m to work with new pcs (but i dont use one for my model m and its fine).

as far as the benefits of PS/2 over USB, unless you are overloading your usb bus you aren't going to be seeing much delay if any. it all has to do with how a signal is sent. with usb the device polls a certain number of times a second, but has to deal with traffic on the bus which might delay the signal if its very busy. with ps/2 the signal takes precedence over everything else giving zero delay.

 

[Guest]

As far as I know a non-active adapter wont give you the 0 delay like a PS/2 port should because it's just there as a filler in case you don't have any USB ports on your computer. An active PS/2 physically changes the USB to a legit PS/2 port (or so I'm told?).

The Decks do have one LED per key. And they can actually be ordered with only a PS/2 port, I'm really debating getting one of these at this point.

Also, what's the gold plated stuff Steelseries is spouting about? Market hype or legit durability bonus?