I love my System76 Lemur Pro laptop and use it a lot. But the keyboard started dying recently. The F and R keys got really finicky, basically not registering most of the time. If I mashed them really hard sometimes they’d repeat like 15 times. It was not good. I started using an external keyboard just to get by.

From what I read online, the keyboard is not readily replaced. It’s integrated into the top case and requires the battery, speakers, and motherboard to all be swapped, with all connections/wires unhooked and then re-hooked. Well I’ve done stuff like that before so I figured I could do it. Better than getting a whole new laptop!

I struggled with some of the connectors and ended up leaving the fan connections just on and taking the fan and main board off together. I also left the CMOS battery connected. I popped it all back together and…. it worked! Now it’s a beautiful new top case, feels brand new. I’m very happy with this, and it wasn’t even that bad to swap out. According to the photo timestamps, it took me from 7:09pm to 7:46pm, so 35 minutes.