Cooler Master SK650 Limited Edition White Mechanical Keyboard Review

Cooler Master Portal Software

The Cooler Master Portal software allows you to fully customize you SK650 in more than one way. When you first download the installer, it will give you the option to install the Portal software for your specific peripheral. In this case, only the SK650 was hooked up to our test PC. However, say there was a Cooler Master mouse, it would also show up.  So, we picked the SK650, installed the Cooler Master Portal software, then updated the firmware.

For the SK650, there are four sections in the Portal Software. These sections are LED, Macro, Key Map and Profiles. The first section, the LED section is where you can customize the RGB lighting on your keyboard. What amazed me the first time I used the Cooler Master Portal software was the numerous option in the customization menu for the RGB lighting. There are 21 different settings in total. Many of these include sub menus with even more customization options. An itemized list of all the customization options is listed below:

• Static
• Rainbow Wave
  • Left-Right
  • Right-Left
  • Front-Back
  • Back-Front
• Crosshair
  • Crosshair Color
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Reactive Fade
  • Reactive Key Color
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Custom
• Stars
  • Star Color
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Rain
  • Rain Color
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Color Cycle
• Breathing
  • Breathing
  • Random
• Ripple
  • Customize
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Multi-Layer (Up To 4 Layers)
• Multi-Zone (Up To 4 Layers)
• System Status
  • Equalizer
  • CPU Loading
• Snowing
  • Snowing
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Reactive Punch
  • Reactive Punch
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Heartbeat
  • Heartbeat
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Fireball
  • Fireball
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Circle Spectrum
  • Clockwise
  • Counterclockwise
• Reactive Tornado
  • Clockwise
  • Counterclockwise
• Water Ripple
  • Customize
  • Random
  • Background Color
• Snake
• Off

The next two sections go hand and hand in my opinion. These sections are the Macro section and the Key Map section. The macro section allows you to record custom commands and assign them to specific hotkeys. This is very useful for me as I do a lot with Photoshop and Premiere Pro. The next section is the Key Map section. This allows you to re-map your entire keyboard. The keymap section displays an image of the SK650. Each key has a color assigned, either red, green or blue. Green means the key is available to map. Blue means the key is currently assigned and red means the key is disabled.

The last and final section in the Cooler Master Portal software is the Profiles section. Here, you can import and export custom profiles to use in the Cooler Master Portal Software.