I'm looking into getting a new keyboard,
and this PC Gamer article stood out to me. Anyone have any recommendations or experiences from that list? The "Patriot Viper V770" stood out to me in particular.
To be straight with you, I have a hard time understanding how you really make a keyboard more suitable for gaming by making it larger and adding more keys. These macro keys all look like pretty hard reaches compared to your hand position while playing a game, where you are focused on your primary keys - the ones that actually matter.
What you should probably just focus on is switch type, overall build quality, keyboard size and maybe whether you really want RGB / backlighting for your keycaps. A lot of keyboards are going to fall into the ideal space depending on what you want in these answers.
For me personally, I'd toss RGB / backlighting because it tends to compromise keycap quality and is just generally ugly, but this one is mostly an aesthetic choice. Switch type, I think your best bet is in the 45g category, so either a uniform Topre, Cherry MX Red or Cherry MX Brown; if you've never used a linear switch I might lean towards Cherry MX Brown. Cherry MX Blue doesn't suit as well to gaming purposes in my opinion but I guess some people get on with them. Build quality and keyboard size are the areas where you have the biggest questions to answer I think - for me I am almost always going to want to use the smallest keyboard possible for gaming to give my mouse the largest amount of surface as possible and to bring my mouse arm more comfortably closer to my keyboard arm.
So I guess my advice for a keyboard suited mainly for gaming would be to dump just about anything that has a numpad where smaller is better (though really that FC980C we were talking about the other day is about the size of a tenkeyless and would be an option in my eyes), runs your preferred variety of 45g switch, and then focus on build & keycap quality. I actually have had the best time gaming on my HHKBP2 or FC660C just due to the size and quality feel, but there are plenty of Cherry based 'boards in similar profiles (there's an FC660M or 60% stuff like the Pok3r). There are also plenty of decent tenkeyless options if you really want to pick up something with RGB / backlighting or just want a more standard layout outside of gaming - CoolerMaster, Ducky, Rosewill all have pretty good options on that front. Generally though I'd probably just avoid anything that has to tell you it was made for "gaming", it's still a keyboard first.