# Printed Circuit Boards gold plated components



## kjavanb123 (Apr 18, 2013)

All,

As you notice, PCBs ( printed circuit boards ) are what most scrap yards trade, so I decided to pick two Chinese made and find out the percentage and grams of gold plated pins off of them. Hope someone else who have processed them could provide the yield data on pins.

Here are the 2 boards I started before depopulating:


and



After removing the PCI or memory slots using a method that one of the members here had posted before, here are the numbers broken down. 

Pins from PCI slots = 31.57 grams
Pins from memory slots = 12.11 grams
Pins from AGP ports = 8.62 grams
Pins from I/O connection ports = 9.88 grams
Pins from speaker port = 3.67 grams
Pins from mouse/keyboard ports = 2.34 grams
Pins from USB ports = 1.10 grams

So total net weight for gold plated pins from 2 Chinese made boards is 69.29 grams. It took me 6 mins to remove the pins from the PCI slots from 2 boards, and I think in 15 mins both boards can be depopulated from their gold plated items. Total weight of boards is 1100 grams prior to segregation. So percentage of pins can be calculated as 69.29 grams x 100 / 1100 grams = 6.92%.
I think we can estimate the amount of pins that can be collected from 1MT of PCBs would be around 1MT = 1,000,000 grams x 6.92% = 69,200 grams = 69.2 kg 
which is around 154lbs.
I couldn't find the yield on slot pins, but once that is known, it can be plugged in to the formula to get the gold content of pins.

I believe PCBs are more commonly found in the scrap yards with reasonable prices.

Thanks and regards,
Kevin


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## rucito (Apr 19, 2013)

hello, in the CPU slot also has gold plated pins
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=12145


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