# Advice appreciated with a laptop



## aga (Feb 3, 2017)

While waiting for the Mess to settle/decant/filter i've found a broken laptop, and would really like to get all the way to a tiny blob of gold.

It's a Gateway M465-E model and is intact, complete with ram, hdd etc.

My first thought is to break it up into the major and easily identifiable bits, such as PCBs, copper, plastic, steel etc.

Before going any further and just making another mess, it would be great to hear how an experienced e-scrap refiner would tackle a single laptop, and what weights of PMs one could expect to recover.


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## g_axelsson (Feb 3, 2017)

Boardsort pays $1.50 per pound for whole laptops, the value of the gold content should be a couple of times higher by my guess.
http://boardsort.com/payout.php

By starting with the price boardsort pays for different scrap, it is possible to calculate the bare minimum of gold in components.

I would suggest that you start with some easy scrap, like gold fingers from ram. You don't need a lot just to get visible gold, you can extract just a few tens of mg of gold and melt if you want. I've done it.

Göran


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## Topher_osAUrus (Feb 3, 2017)

Laptops are kind of a pain. With all the tiny hidden screws, and what not.

The ram, wifi network card, and HDD are relatively easy. I have even had a couple where I could remove the processor by simply removing a cover, then the heat sync, then the cruddy p4 pinless.

After removing the other 7,000 screws, you can get the board out.
Another few screws will get you the mouse track pad (usually by now, I switch from screwdriver to hammer) which is sometimes gold, other times copper.

After that, i would take off the mlcc's, Ta caps, north south bridge chips, graphics processor.. Any of the little bits of value off of the board and put them all in their own jars.. And thats where a lot of mine still reside to this day.

I then decided I hate escrap.

Maybe when my children get a couple years older, and their tiny hands become more dexterous, I will start my own private sweat shop for escrap.. But, until then...


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## aga (Feb 3, 2017)

So, rip it to bits and get the shiny bits into a pile, then Glare at it with Hatred.

OK. Can try to do that ! (apart from the shiny bits)

I was thinking more about the gold on/in the other bits, like HDD, CD-ROM, inside the chips etc.


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## aga (Feb 3, 2017)

g_axelsson said:


> Boardsort pays $1.50 per pound for whole laptops


Thank you for that excellent information.

My interest is in recovering/refining the PMs, and in the chemistry, not in trying to make money from it.

Well, at least not at the moment.

Personally i'd like to succeed at extracting at least a tiny blob of gold, preferrably blobs of the other metals too.

The 'Mess' thing continues - it has not been abandoned it at all, just that it is taking a very long time to get to a point where i can declare it a Failure (likely) or a Success (unlikely).


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## Topher_osAUrus (Feb 3, 2017)

aga said:


> So, rip it to bits and get the shiny bits into a pile, then Glare at it with Hatred.
> yes! :twisted:
> OK. Can try to do that ! (apart from the shiny bits)
> 
> I was thinking more about the gold on/in the other bits, like HDD, CD-ROM, inside the chips etc.



The HDD's have a board that is considered to be high end, buyers pay more for them because they have more valuable bits. As well as cool rare earth magnets to play with, then hurt yourself with, when they inevitably pinch your fingers.

Some Cd-roms have bits of gold, I believe that is strictly dependant upon the manufacturer, the year made, and the "quality" (which is completely relevant to the time, i suppose). But, for the most part, cd-rom and floppy drive's get more money going in the scrap steel bin. (at least thats how it is at the recycle center here, but they are a joke compared to shipping the goods out across state lines)

As far as "inside the chips" goes, that really depends on what chips you mean.

The north south bridge chips all have gold in them, the green bases have less than the black top pieces. But, those need to be incinerated to ash, concentrated, and processed as usual.

Patnor has a great thread on it
Here http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827

Tzoax has another good thread on various components he processed
Here http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=20662

As far as the separation of the other small components into piles of valuable vs trash, I don't know if there is a definitive thread for that.. I know there are a whole bunch of them that go over certain things like mlcc's, tantalum caps, etc.. But, I am not sure if there is one that has them all listed, and what their yields are. I do know that the mlcc's can be base metal though, and not the palladium versions.


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## UncleBenBen (Feb 3, 2017)

Beelzebub wants to toss a couple pesos in! :twisted: 

Find more scrap before you try and process any if it. Try to save up at least a half kilo of any one type of component (It's going to take a bit more than one laptop.)before you process it. It's a lot easier to chase a gram or two than it is a grain or two, and it's about the same amount of work.

Get the word out with family and friends that you need old electronics. Everybody has stuff lying around if you look for it. Tear it down and sort it as it comes in. In the mean time pick a process, whether chips or pins or fingers and read all you can about it. In a few months you should have enough to start recovering.

Or just buy some scrap jewelry and get on with it! :mrgreen:


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## Topher_osAUrus (Feb 3, 2017)

UncleBenBen said:


> Or just buy some scrap jewelry and get on with it! :mrgreen:


Nailed it :!: +1 × 6.0221409e23


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## patnor1011 (Feb 4, 2017)

One laptop is not worth bothering with it. 
There was article where some lady from some refinery gave out some numbers. According to her 200 complete laptops yield 5 oz of gold.
That mean your laptop should have 0.77g of gold average. Question is how much of that are you able to recover as you will likely not get all of it anyway. 
I dismantled over thousand of them but I do not think I am going to have 770g of gold there. I sold some RAM, hdd, network cards, dvd roms for reuse but pile of pins and mlcc surely look impressive.


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## aga (Feb 4, 2017)

Oh ! Less than 10 kg per laptop then ...  

Great data patnor, thanks.

I guess the best option is what the others said : sell the laptop (maybe fix it first) and buy some scrap gold.


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## anachronism (Feb 17, 2017)

g_axelsson said:


> By starting with the price boardsort pays for different scrap, it is possible to calculate the bare minimum of gold in components.
> 
> Göran



Only if you assume that the value of the scrap laptops is based upon just the gold old friend. It isn't.


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## g_axelsson (Feb 17, 2017)

anachronism said:


> g_axelsson said:
> 
> 
> > By starting with the price boardsort pays for different scrap, it is possible to calculate the bare minimum of gold in components.
> ...


You are correct, for components with other values in them it has to be compensated for. So the question is, how much value is there in gold in laptops compared to palladium and silver? Around 80%? I have seen a number of different tests of computer scrap and the largest part of values is from gold, then there is palladium, silver and copper that also could pay out if you have large enough amounts of scrap.

So I should have written :


> By starting with the price boardsort pays for different scrap, it is possible to calculate the bare minimum of valuable metals in components.



Göran


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## aga (Feb 17, 2017)

I repaired the laptop. Just waiting on a PSU then i can sell it.

It was probably just the thick wad of cat-hair (or similar) clogging up the cpu cooling fan heatsink, making it freeze up after a while (due to the heat not escaping).

Someone must have had it in pieces because of this, as some hairs were found in the connector to the screen.
Blowing them out got the screen to light up again, now it runs fine.

If only the gold refining thing was as simple as that - still have no gold from my Mess, not a sausage  

Not giving up on it yet though.


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## Tzoax (Feb 18, 2017)

aga said:


> I repaired the laptop. Just waiting on a PSU then i can sell it.
> 
> It was probably just the thick wad of cat-hair (or similar) clogging up the cpu cooling fan heatsink, making it freeze up after a while (due to the heat not escaping).
> 
> Not giving up on it yet though.



If you already didn't, replace old thermal paste between CPU and heatsink, it will improve cooling, also do the same thing on GPU. In most cases thermal paste was never changed on laptops so in that case it would improve cooling of processor and graphic chip tremendously.



aga said:


> I repaired the laptop. Just waiting on a PSU then i can sell it.
> Someone must have had it in pieces because of this, as some hairs were found in the connector to the screen.
> Blowing them out got the screen to light up again, now it runs fine.
> Not giving up on it yet though.



Now when your screen is working you can go to BIOS and see if you have temperature monitoring option there. Temperature is based on thermometer built in beneath CPU. If you have that option in BIOS you can observe actual temperature and compare it before and after you do anything (cleaning cooler, changing thermal paste).

But, in that case computer in not overloaded, if you have OS installed there are great applications for temperature monitoring such as HWMONITOR. Just start some pc game for example and let HWMONITOR runs in a background. This is a best test to see temperature limits while overloading computer. You can check "working temperature" on any model of CPU in its specification and compare it with your monitored temperatures, and if monitored temperatures are not reaching working temperature specified by manufacturer, CPU is ok. If computer is still freezing than it is most likely OS related, so new OS is best solution.

Alexander


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## aga (Feb 18, 2017)

No, i didn't replace the paste, despite having about 5 tubes of the stuff in a drawer  

Thanks for the very good advice Tzoax.


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