# still finding gold in CPU’s after AR



## tom341 (May 9, 2007)

Hello all
Let me introduce myself, my name is Thomas or Just Tom. I live in Pueblo Colorado. I have been going through all these questions and answers for weeks now and I can not fiend an answer to a question I have and, I was hoping to fiend answers without bothering you guys to death.
I have bought a lot of CPU’s on E-bay to get myself started in this hobby of refining. I tried to do the aqua rega process years ago but there wasn’t much that I could fiend on the subject then, and that’s about as far as that went. Now with the computer things are much easer to fiend and there seems to be a lot moor information out there. Now that I have found this forum I have a question. I have been breaking the CPU’s with only a hammer blow or two and mixing my aqua rega and letting it do its work for about a day or so then start recovering the gold after the urea and SMB (not sure of the spelling for SMB hehehe) I have recovered 40.24 grams thus far running the gold through the aqua rega a second time and then melting the gold in my Paragon electric oven. I first sprayed some cooking oil in the Graphite crucible (I bought at harbor freight tools) and pored in the creamy brown collard gold powder, and then covered with a light coat of BORAX just enough to cover the gold. Fired my oven to 2000 degrease F and than I poured it into a graphite mold. There was a little glass on top but not much I chipped it off and ended up with a nice and shiny ingot. OK every thing went well except when I took a closer look at the discarded CPU’s I could break them some moor and see visible gold still inside. My question is should I be grinding these CPU, s into powder than running through the aqua rega? If so what is the best way to grind them to powder?
I am mixing my AR ½ pound sodium nitrate to 32 ounces of muriatic acid 31.45% to two pounds of broke up CPU’s. And it does take quite a bit of urea to kill the nitric. So why am I still finding visible gold when I break the CPU’s down even more? How is the best way to grind them to powder? …THX GUYS … >>God Bless<< …<*\\\><… Tom


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## darkelf2x1 (May 9, 2007)

crushing them to powder makes some sense

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ball mill would work but that might be beyond your price range


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## AgAuPtRh (May 9, 2007)

Hey Tom,

Go to the forum index then go to the "help needed" section then look for getting gold shining. There is some pretty good info in there for truly purifying your gold.

Now about those cpu and the gold in them. I've seen a few guys on ebay doing the same. Just whacking the cpu with a hammer to break it some them doing an AR process. Man--these guys are missing out on some good material. I get the feeling they aren't interested in all that is there. 

inside of the cpu there is what some call angel hair. Each one of the pins you see on the outside has gold wire that goes to the chip in the center. Some cpu have a plate you can remove and some don't. But between the ceramic layers is where the wire is. 

crushing and grinding the cpu to as fine a powder as you possibly can will give you a greater gold yield than just cracking them in pieces. Crushing and grinding can be as simple or as complex as you want to get. Some have the luxury of a ball mill -- but man they are expensive. Some just use a simple piece of pipe with a smaller diameter pipe that slides inside and crushes the cpu. I've read about some who crack the cpu then use a morter and pestle. Depends on what you have access to. 

I've been rolling the idea around in my brain with using an old lawn mower. Building a chamber around the blade with a chute to feed the cpu's or circuit boards in. Just been thinkin some on it. 

You never know what ideas can come to mind when a man is sitting on his front porch with a good cigar.


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## catfish (May 9, 2007)

Tom:

First, welcome to the forum. There are a couple of posts back in April on this very same subject. Look under General Chat page 2, subject CPU and memory gold content.

Tom, I do quite a few CPU’s too. I first take off the gold cap and heat sink with a heat gun. It is gold plated; I run that through my Electrolytic cell for stripping. I then take the whole Ceramic CPU and run it through Nitrate Soda (sic) Sodium Nitrate and Hydrochloric solution. I use the same formula that you are using. If you are putting 2 lbs in the AR (sic) you will have some nitric acid left. I always do to. I mix up 16 OZ of Urea with one qt of hot tap water and dissolve the urea. This will make it very fast to notice the reaction and when you get the ph up to about 1.0, and then stop adding urea mix. Just throw the rest away if you have any left over. If you put a little too much in the AR you will not notice it for it will be already dissolved. I wait about 15 minutes and then precipitate with Sodium Meta bi sulfate. 

After I get the gold from this process, I then crush the ceramics chips as small as I can. I have not come up with a satisfactory method of grinding them up. I built me a small crusher, by taking a 6 in piece of 2 ½ in pipe and screwing a cap on one end and then I took a 10 inch piece of 1 inch piece of pipe and screwed a cap on one end and filled it full of hot lead. Then I put a cap on the other end. I crush the chips in the pipe. You don’t loose any material when you do it this way. Just keep crushing them until you get then as small as you possible can. It would be ideal if you could crush them to fine powder, but I can’t get there. There is some gold left in the body of the chip, but not a lot. You can spend hours just getting 10 cents worth of gold. 

There is more gold on the tab that you removed, than in the ceramic body of the chip. It all adds up.

You may want to look at the posts. I did a very non scientific experiment on some Pentium pro chips. Another member did a similar experiment and came up with a greater yield of gold by grinding the ceramic chip to dust. He had a Lab. Same theory but just greater gold content in Pentium Pros.

Lots of luck.

Tom 
Catfish


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