deskthority

Hey guys, I'm looking to build a keyboard soon that will hopefully be much quieter than my current Corsair Keyboard with Cherry Blues. I have a daughter that is 2 months old that will be sleeping in my office while I work from home. I have ventured into the idea of building a custom keyboard, and a top consideration is how to make sure the keyboard is silent (or at least MUCH more quiet than my current keyboard.)

Above are the 4 ways I have learned to ensure that my keyboard is silent/quiet: wooden/acrylic cases to absorb sound, silent switches (Healios pictured above), foam inserts for the case, and lubing the switches and stabilizers. Any other considerations would be helpful to further ensure a nice quiet KB.

For my build, I'm considering the following: 65% PCB (not sure which one to buy, advice appreciated) Wooden Case Healios or Tangerine switches

Two more questions: does the mounting plate for the switches affect the sound that much, and does the overall weight of the keyboard affect the sound?

I dunno about the value of Zeal's linear switches. I think you could get Cherry's or Gateron's "Silent Red" switches, Sprit's gold springs and lube the switches yourself and get pretty much the same result for less, if you already have some or could get all three from the same shop ... but different people have different sensibilities. I'm not a fan of linear switches so I have not tried myself.

Different mounting plates do have different sound characteristics. JCKeyboards on Youtube has several videos comparing the sound of different plates and cases against each other. I think you would be interested in this one in particular.
I would say that brass sounds the best of the plate materials. If you have a tray-mount case, you could also consider not using a plate, which would instead flex a bit more and thus absorb some vibration.

I suspect it is the solidness that is the desirable property of heavier cases, not the weight in itself.

If you get PCB, plate and case for tray-mounting on standoffs, you could also get some sound damping by mounting rubber O-rings on the standoffs.
You could also put foam in-between PCB and plate but then you would have to cut a hole for every switch.

Don't forget rubber feet and a desk pad underneath.

This wouldn't be a custom board but you could look into getting either a dampened Alps or dampened Matias board. I have an SGI AT-101 with dampened white Alps and it is decently quiet.