# MLCC's galore on this MB



## joubjonn (Mar 7, 2014)

check out all the MLCC's on this old dual socket 8 MB (Compaq board circa 1996). never seen so
many on a board before. I'll save them for later and one day when I think I'm good enough I'll go for the palladium. iv got about 400 grams so far from about 30 laptops/desktops.


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## necromancer (Mar 8, 2014)

very nice old board !!


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## joubjonn (Mar 8, 2014)

just depopulated it. 23 grams in MLCC's and arrays. iv got about 300 grams total. from many many boards
yielded lots of big 4 sided IC's. but those are hit and miss on gold content.


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## WEEE Ben (Nov 28, 2014)

Hi all, new here and just going through the posts.
I'm wondering about these MMLC's and trying to identify them better.

Most mmlc's are marked with a "C" on the boards like C123, C1234 etc
Some mmlc looking items are marked with "L", I believe they are different and do not contain palladium., is this correct?

MMLC's do vary, no doubt, like new style mmlc's apparently contain far less palladium/silver than an mmlc made 5 years ago, is this correct?

Probably a few too many questions first up but is the're a thread showing the yields from mmlc's?


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## macfixer01 (Nov 29, 2014)

WEEE Ben said:


> Hi all, new here and just going through the posts.
> I'm wondering about these MMLC's and trying to identify them better.
> 
> Most mmlc's are marked with a "C" on the boards like C123, C1234 etc
> ...




Most board designations are pretty straight forward such as Rxxx for a resistor, but others make less sense such as Qxxx for a transistor. Cxxx would indicate a capacitor but really says nothing about what type or size of capacitor. The number just identifies which specific capacitor within the circuit it is. It's used for purposes of placing the correct type and size capacitor in the correct place during assembly based off a parts list, and also for troubleshooting the circuit for repairs later on. Lxxx is a little less obvious but is normally is used to label an inductor such as a choke coil, which are rated in units called MilliHenries. It may or may not have a ferrite core and would contain some copper wire but probably no PM's.


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## WEEE Ben (Nov 29, 2014)

Thanks Mac, It's all a learning curve I guess.

Here's an example of a video card with MLCC's marked "C" and similar objects but marked with "L"

The board..






The various MLCC's..






and here are the L's..






So as you can see they appear to be very similar but apparently very different.

Speaking of Mac's, Apple G5 CPU's, the server version usually has two of these cpu's and my favorite thing to scrap because of the amount of mlcc's..






The bottoms have many mlcc's..






The tops have even more, But what about that cpu thing on top? would that have anything inside?






I'm just trying to determine whether I should pick the mlcc's or sell the board whole, at best I will get slot cpu value which isn't much,
if they have something inside that square thing then I'll start breaking these up, Thanks.


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## macfixer01 (Nov 29, 2014)

WEEE Ben said:


> Thanks Mac, It's all a learning curve I guess.
> 
> Here's an example of a video card with MLCC's marked "C" and similar objects but marked with "L"
> 
> ...





Yes these surface mount inductors look similar to capacitors but it's what's inside them that determines the function (and value if any). Here's a typical data sheet and you can see they contain ferrite mostly, a little nickel and tin end caps. http://www.vishay.com/docs/34018/ihsm3825.pdf You'll typically find them used in oscillator circuits like L1 in the upper left of the first photo, or in power filter circuits and power supplies, or on some signal lines connecting to external devices where extra noise filtering is needed like L6 and L7 on your audio card there.


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