# board colors



## boog (Oct 22, 2014)

Hey there, im new to the forum .iv been reading around for a month or iv read iv got got and read hokes hard back,and i thank u all for all the info,iv been collecting just about every i get my hands on ,and iv been looking around for it might tell ,me what the difference in the colors ,iv got green ,,,purple ,yellow ,blue,why r they different color,or am i thinking to much in to it


----------



## shmandi (Oct 22, 2014)

First of all, read some forum rules. Your text is very hard to read, as it is not written in proper English.
What colours are you asking about?


----------



## Harold_V (Oct 22, 2014)

boog said:


> Hey there, im new to the forum .iv been reading around for a month or iv read iv got got and read hokes hard back,and i thank u all for all the info,iv been collecting just about every i get my hands on ,and iv been looking around for it might tell ,me what the difference in the colors ,iv got green ,,,purple ,yellow ,blue,why r they different color,or am i thinking to much in to it


Before you post again, read what is and what is not acceptable on this board. 
*DO NOT POST TEXT LINGO HERE!* That is grounds for immediate dismissal. 
Use proper English, spelling out exactly what you mean, and use punctuation. 

Harold


----------



## boog (Oct 30, 2014)

Sorry first timer here!


----------



## galenrog (Oct 30, 2014)

After several very painful readings of the original post I believe that he is referring to the solder mask colors of circuit boards, more specifically, motherboards.


----------



## Geo (Oct 30, 2014)

It is my understanding that the brightly colored motherboards are of a lower quality than the standard green mother boards. This is strictly for mother boards.


----------



## silversaddle1 (Oct 30, 2014)

A lot of the cheap MB's coming out of china are all different colors, so of course the board buyers want to knock anything that is not green. I had a go around with a large buyer who wanted to lowball me on a gaylord of MB's because they were blue. Said they were modern cheap china junk. Really? The came out of older Dell equipment that was no where near modern!


----------



## rickbb (Oct 30, 2014)

Which is why you should sell to someone that pulls them out and looks at the CPU socket size and components on the board before giving you a price.

From what I've sold over the past year or so this is how my buyer seems to price things.

Small pin less socket and few MLCC's = low price.

Larger pinned socket and many MLCC's = mid grade price.

Larger socket, lots of MLCC's = server or Telco grade price. $$$

I actually get the same price per pound for trimmed PCI modem cards as I do for the small socket MOBO's.


----------



## EwasteD (Nov 3, 2014)

Best to consult with you prospective buyers. Different buyers have different criteria for purchasing these materials.


----------



## jason_recliner (Nov 3, 2014)

silversaddle1 said:


> A lot of the cheap MB's coming out of china are all different colors, so of course the board buyers want to knock anything that is not green. I had a go around with a large buyer who wanted to lowball me on a gaylord of MB's because they were blue. Said they were modern cheap china junk. Really? The came out of older Dell equipment that was no where near modern!



I actually wondered if blue might be actually more expensive and higher quality mask.
I've had piles of quality brand gear which is blue; Gigabyte, Dell and Asus. A lot of Netgear cards are blue and they're not what you'd call bottom end.
But everything cheap is green.


----------



## Geo (Nov 5, 2014)

jason_recliner said:


> silversaddle1 said:
> 
> 
> > A lot of the cheap MB's coming out of china are all different colors, so of course the board buyers want to knock anything that is not green. I had a go around with a large buyer who wanted to lowball me on a gaylord of MB's because they were blue. Said they were modern cheap china junk. Really? The came out of older Dell equipment that was no where near modern!
> ...



Everything brown or white is cheap. I've seen brown touch pads that were unbelievable to look at but that's about it. Green boards is the average but I wouldn't classify them as cheap. I think it would be more accurate to call them green common.


----------



## jason_recliner (Nov 5, 2014)

I didn't say green ones are cheap, but that cheap ones are green. Yes, it's the most common and so it's presumably also the lowest cost.
I've passed by a couple of golden honey ones, if that's what you mean by brown. You're right, they're cheap too. I think I've never noticed white in 30 years.

My favourite is whichever comes off most easily. :mrgreen:


----------



## macfixer01 (Nov 5, 2014)

Back when I first recall starting to see the ROHS designation (no lead, mercury, cadmium, etc.) on circuit boards, they always seemed to be red boards which were also something new at the time. I got the notion that the red color was another ROHS indication. I believe now it was just coincidental though.


----------



## patnor1011 (Nov 5, 2014)

Brightly colored are mostly new, what we refer as green are older stuff. New tend to have smaller contacts, less pins, I would not say that they are cheap chinese as not all of them are made in china. I would simply say they are new compared to older stuff with more capacitors, IC chip and pin contacts.


----------



## g_axelsson (Nov 5, 2014)

Well spoken Patnor, I think you are right. Today the electronic market is global, it is the same components and same machines that are making the boards no matter where they are located.

Göran


----------



## Geo (Nov 6, 2014)

Perhaps I misspoke. I responded to boards in general and not just mother boards. When I think about printed circuit boards, I think in the scope of all boards. The most common PCB's are from consumer products and not necessarily computers. To be fair, the topics name is "board colors". There are boards in almost every modern appliance. Anything digital, clocks, stoves, microwaves, refrigerators, DVD players, cable box, modems and routers, TV's, and on and on. Brown and white boards are more common. There are many of these PCB's that yield more PM's by weight than computers. Just because there's no visible gold, people tend to overlook them. This forum has been a great resource at identifying some of the more exotic boards with greater PM value but still more are still waiting to be brought to our scrutiny. It is my opinion that the most valuable metal in all PCB's is by far copper. The copper value of all printed circuit boards far outweighs the PM value. We concentrate our efforts to recovering drips and drabs of gold while letting the greater value either sit or be carted off to places unknown. I feel that the promotion of metal recovery in general should be stressed more instead of just precious metal. Since this is a precious metal forum, the main topic will always be about the gold and that's fine but do keep in mind that the copper in most PCB's (even motherboards) is worth more than gold by weight in boards.


----------



## g_axelsson (Nov 6, 2014)

Geo said:


> It is my opinion that the most valuable metal in all PCB's is by far copper. The copper value of all printed circuit boards far outweighs the PM value. We concentrate our efforts to recovering drips and drabs of gold while letting the greater value either sit or be carted off to places unknown. I feel that the promotion of metal recovery in general should be stressed more instead of just precious metal. Since this is a precious metal forum, the main topic will always be about the gold and that's fine but do keep in mind that the copper in most PCB's (even motherboards) is worth more than gold by weight in boards.


I don't agree. The copper is a major part of the value but by far not the biggest. Au and Pd are both more valuable according to many studies. For example in table 2 in http://ewasteguide.info/files/Montero_2012_ESE.pdf (numbers came from an 2009 article)

```
Table 2 Metal composition and the intrinsic value of PCBs [9].
Metal  Wt.%    Value (L/d·kg)    PCBs intrinsic value (L/d·kg PCBs)     (%)
Au      0.025    14200               3.55                               65.4
Pd      0.010    6200                0.62                               11.4
Ag      0.100    250.0               0.25                               4.6
Cu      16.0     3.30                0.53                               9.7
Al      5.0      1.20                0.06                               1.1
Fe      5.0      0.10                0.01                               0.1
Sn      3.0      8.10                0.24                               4.5
Pb      2.0      1.30                0.03                               0.5
Ni      1.0      13.20               0.13                               2.4
Zn      1.0      1.20                0.01                               0.2
```
In this 2009 study the copper represented 10% of the value and gold 65%.

I see it as the copper will pay for the refining charges when I get enough scrap to deal directly with the refinery. :mrgreen: 

Göran


----------



## Geo (Nov 6, 2014)

How can other values be worth more than copper when most low grade boards may not have any gold value. It is dependent on the feed stock. Is there any one entity that has sourced all the many different PCB's world wide and took a sample to find out or is it one genre of PCB that the study is based on or even nationality. It could be that gold was hogging the spotlight because that's what the researchers was focused on. I just can't see that the gold on a computer mother board as having more value than the copper from the same board even with the huge difference in the price of the metals. Maybe I am sidetracked by the extra copper weight in wires or connectors. I really wish that I made more from the gold than I do from the copper but the reality of it for me is it's just not the case.


----------



## g_axelsson (Nov 6, 2014)

I thought your statement was about boards in general and that there were good stuff out there beside computer boards.



Geo said:


> Perhaps I misspoke. I responded to boards in general and not just mother boards. When I think about printed circuit boards, I think in the scope of all boards. The most common PCB's are from consumer products and not necessarily computers. To be fair, the topics name is "board colors". There are boards in almost every modern appliance. Anything digital, clocks, stoves, microwaves, refrigerators, DVD players, cable box, modems and routers, TV's, and on and on. Brown and white boards are more common. There are many of these PCB's that yield more PM's by weight than computers. Just because there's no visible gold, people tend to overlook them. This forum has been a great resource at identifying some of the more exotic boards with greater PM value but still more are still waiting to be brought to our scrutiny. It is my opinion that the most valuable metal in all PCB's is by far copper. The copper value of all printed circuit boards far outweighs the PM value. We concentrate our efforts to recovering drips and drabs of gold while letting the greater value either sit or be carted off to places unknown. I feel that the promotion of metal recovery in general should be stressed more instead of just precious metal. Since this is a precious metal forum, the main topic will always be about the gold and that's fine but do keep in mind that the copper in most PCB's (even motherboards) is worth more than gold by weight in boards.



Of course if we only look at the low end scale of boards then the copper part will be the major value of the boards. For example old TV-boards, radios, usually on phenolic paper or FR2 substrate (brown boards). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FR-2 Also on the lower end is power supplies. These boards doesn't contain a lot of integrated circuits or gold plated contacts.
But in digital consumer goods as DVD-players, satellite receivers, computers, flat screen TV:s and various micro controlled appliances there are a lot of integrated circuits and these chips contains gold bond wires and then the gold part becomes a major part of the value. So I agree, a lot of them are better than computer boards based on weight.

Where I live,the scrap yards have gone insane. They pay 0.4 euro for any low grade board and 0.8 euro for high grade... but so far I haven't seen one board they deem high grade. So I just sort my boards in two grades, high grade that I keep and low grade that I sell. (Power supplies, any boards with heavy transformers on, cleaned boards where I have pulled any gold containing components off and even bare boards.)

Any other metals I get while scrapping I collect and sell locally. If I have time I go after other values for example copper in transformers and inductors but right now I have too much scrap and too little time to bother with those small pieces.

Göran


----------



## Anonymous (Nov 8, 2014)

The copper value of PC motherboards is far less than the copper value of server boards. Many server boards have between 5 and 7 layers of substrate copper whereas PC boards have less. To the point where some server grade boards can be 40% by weight copper overall even taking into account the chips on board.

As Goran does I trade boards on, I don't bother refining them. However the price of these board per tonne, with the exception of power boards (which are copper based ) tends to be based upon the PM content and not the copper content. Geo I am sorry but you are wrong in your assumption Sir.

Jon

edit: grammar


----------

