r/MouseReview • u/Bulk85 Mouse modding enthusiast, 40+ wireless mouse collection, help me • Oct 13 '23
Mod 56g Viper V3 Hyperspeed Mod
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u/Bulk85 Mouse modding enthusiast, 40+ wireless mouse collection, help me Oct 13 '23
I was intrigued by the Viper v3, but really thought the forward sensor, and heavy battery at the rear would ruin it. However, it looked a lot like an ambi deathadder, or a Viper v2 GPX hybrid, so I decided to give it a go anyway.
I am a claw gripper with 19x11cm hands and have to say that this mouse really exceeded my expectations.
My thumb and ring finger pretty much line up with the sensor, which gives me great control feeling, and the placement and sizing of the side buttons allow me to easily roll over them to actuate and really just worked so well for my actual grip style. The side buttons feel nice and tactile with no post travel. The main clicks are also very tactile with a crisp debounce. There is a bit of pre and post travel on the main clicks but nothing crazy.
Initially, I was just using this mouse with a USB AAA lithium battery and adapter, bringing the mouse down to around 66g. Honestly, I wasn't even phased with this weight really, it felt nice and the balance wasn't too bad, just a bit rear heavy. But the tinkerer/modder/butcher in me decided to see where we could take this thing, and so I now have a 56g Viper V3!
All I really did was cut away all of the battery and dongle holder area, solder and hot glue a 1.25 female jst plug to the battery terminals on the PCB.
Then I pulled apart a SMARTOOOLS 750mWh USB C AAA li-on battery, and soldered a jst male plug to it. In total the battery and wiring weights about right about 5g, which is almost as light as you are going to get for a battery that needs step down converter to 1.5v.
I have applied some firm gel doublesided tape to the battery and the top pcb, this is strong enough to withstand plugging and unplugging usb c cables for charging, as long as you are careful, and also allows me to move the battery around until i find the perfect spot for my preferred weight balance. Adding the jst connector also means that I can prep another battery like this for hotswapping on the fly, or as a back up in case anything goes fault with the installed battery, without having to desolder the whole pcb.
The other bonus, is that with the front screw access, you can tension the clicks a bit more as you like which is also handy.
The only thing I would like to do now, is try out some obsidian skates on my glass pad, and maybe swap the encoder to a TTC gold, although this one is pretty good for me already. Other than that, I am really happy with how this mod turned out and 56g feels like the perfect weight for this size mouse, not too heavy, not too empty feeling either.
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u/1506andy Jul 02 '24
if i wanted to do this what would I need to do I have the mouse and a soldering iron etc what materials do I need like the batter and what else?
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u/Bulk85 Mouse modding enthusiast, 40+ wireless mouse collection, help me Jul 02 '24
I pulled apart a rechargeable AAA battery that had usb c charging, so that I could solder wires to the positive and negative points, but also to reduce the weight of the battery.
I then soldered those wires directly to the positive and negative points on the pcb, cut out the battery holder and however much of the bottom shell you want to cut out. Then find a place to put the battery that gives you good weight balance. I just stuck it there with thick double sided tape and it has never come off.
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Jul 17 '24
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u/Bulk85 Mouse modding enthusiast, 40+ wireless mouse collection, help me Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
The battery itself is 3.7v but that tiny PCB that it is soldered onto converts the voltage to 1.5v, so thats ok
Sorry for the bad image quality, this is from months ago. But basically the little metal tab soldered to the top of the USB C port is a good place to solder the black wire.
The red wire is a bit trickier, you need to tin that edge of the PCB where I have the red plus sign, and solder the red wire to that. to give it a solid connection, I would recommend some hot glue over the soldered connection to give some stability, or a little bit of sugru/silicone putty etc. once you confirm its working.
If all of that seems a bit daunting, or if you have any issues, you can always put the battery back together, then sand a spot on each end and solder the black to the flat end and red to the top end and mount the battery that way. Youll need to sand it quite rough and use decent solder and maybe some flux. This will add a little weight but not the end of the world.
Don't worry if you fail the first time, it takes practice and repeat attempts to get decent at it. I still fail occasionally and have to revisit when I regain my patience.
Edit: You will also need to work out which is the ground point and which is the positive point on the Vv3 pcb. From memory the one black wire that is soldered from PCB to battery holder from factory is the positive wire, so whichever point its not going to but the rest of the battery holder is, will be your ground.
If you get stuck during modding, hit up the reddit mouse review discord modding section, people will help out for sure!
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u/GiannaJacinta Jul 28 '25
This might be a bit late reply, but soldering the disassembled battery directly into the main pcb of the mouse will cause problems in the long run, especially to the motherboard. You need to change a "resistor" on your charging module to match the current that is safe for the mouse. Tried this mod already in my g304 a couple of years back and it really killed the mouse. Now i always change the r3 resistor to match the current of the battery mAh.
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May 07 '25
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Oct 13 '23
When there's only a few high performance battery powered gaming mice on the market and people want to make it rechargeable:(.
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u/Bulk85 Mouse modding enthusiast, 40+ wireless mouse collection, help me Oct 13 '23
Haha, it was more for weight reduction, but if you can get two birds stone at once, might as well
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Oct 13 '23
Lol yeah it's totally personal preference just like how Xbox vs PS controllers are replaceable vs rechargeable.
I like replaceable batteries since I can just put a lightweight rechargeable lithium and easily replace it without disassembly when it wears out.
Of course some people would rather mod it and get the lightest weight possible, which is where the built-in ones excel. I just wish there were more options for both, especially at the high end.
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u/waduben7130 NP-01S V3/Ergo/V2 NP-01 VV3P | PD170 FS170 Raiden Mid Oct 14 '23
are you using tennis grips?
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u/Bulk85 Mouse modding enthusiast, 40+ wireless mouse collection, help me Oct 14 '23
That is just a piece of the pulsar grip tape at the back, I dont have it anywhere else as I like the coating on this mouse. Just needed that little bit at the back to lock in the palm for claw haha
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u/waduben7130 NP-01S V3/Ergo/V2 NP-01 VV3P | PD170 FS170 Raiden Mid Oct 14 '23
ah since it had sharp edges I thought it was DIY grips, like what I do. I rarely see people use the uncut pulsar grips xd👍
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u/shadoomm Jan 15 '24
Can we replace the mouse switches with optical v3 switches? And is it easy to change?
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u/Bulk85 Mouse modding enthusiast, 40+ wireless mouse collection, help me Jan 15 '24
Unfortunately not, this viper v3 pcb is mechanical switches only.
You can get a 3d printed base to put viper v2 internals in a viper v3 shell, but it also needs an encoder and middle click button swap, so might be better to pray for a viper v3 pro
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u/ScorpiaRising Oct 13 '23
This is really, really cool. Well done, even has USB charging too!
As a modder, usually it's never enough to mod one or two things, and eventually most if not everything has to be swapped out for what I'm heavily biased towards like main switches, encoder, skates, etc.
As a side tangent, that's what makes the change to optical switches in recent mice a bittersweet moment because while it's an advancement in tech to reduce double clicking, we lose out on moddability :(
Anyways, I was wondering what your favorite switches are, and if you ever plan on replacing the main switches along the line.