I’ve been trying to decide between standard MX style switches and silent MX style switches.
I want to go silent, but I’m wondering if the rubber parts of the stem that silence the bottom out and topping out sound’s are prone to failure and or degradation?
Any thoughts?
Nope
To be honest, we can’t really tell right now. They haven’t been around for nearly long enough to conclusively say yes or no (in the long term). However at this point in time, there haven’t really been people saying that they’ve experienced degradation of the rubber dampeners, so I suppose it’d be a ‘no.’
While @jinngle is right that MX silents haven’t been around long enough to give a real answer to your question, we have had SKCM damped cream/white ALPS out for quite a long time now. Also Matias quiet clicks have dampening rubber on the slider & have been out for some years as well. From my experience with those types of damped switches I’m fairly confident in saying you won’t have to worry about the rubber breaking down in silent MX switches with time. Although it should be noted that there is a good bit more rubber used for dampening ALPS/Matias switches than MX switches, the rubber is installed on ALPS/Matias stems as a separate piece while it is injection molded into MX stems, & there is always the possibility of MX switches using a different type of rubber that can either degrade faster or hold up better than what is used in ALPS/Matias switches.
Thanks all for your comments. I’ve pulled the trigger on some zilent’s. 
