# Mother boards



## billyb (Feb 11, 2012)

I have several mother boards from scrap pc's. I've stripped them of cpu and gold plated pins. what I'm left with is the board itself. What can be done with these boards? Is there a way to process the boards for precious metals? These board are large, is it worth the time?


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## jeneje (Feb 11, 2012)

How many do you have? What type are they?
Ken


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## billyb (Feb 12, 2012)

I have about 25 and most of them are from dell computers, 2-4 are hp.


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## jeneje (Feb 12, 2012)

billyb said:


> I have about 25 and most of them are from dell computers, 2-4 are hp.


Hey Billy, what is left on the boards that have any value as far as i know is the black flat packs, mcc chips and some small traces of gold under the cpu. Are these wroth processing? PMs in any amount is worth getting in todays market. The issue here is are you willing to learn how and take the time to store them till you have enought to follow up on. If i had them i would. But that is a decision you can only make yourself. I hope this helps you, i know that there are other members that can explain this better and may know more about what they have in them. I am still learning. Maybe one will chime in and help you further.
Ken


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## jack_burton (Feb 12, 2012)

There are a whole host of environmental and safety issues with the methods for separating PMs from the motherboard. They make very large, very expensive machines that will do just that, but I've yet to see a home recycling set up that makes it worthwhile and is safe. For the most part, members of the forum here sell their depopulated motherboards to outfits like Boardsort.com or to larger eWaste recyclers in their area.

If you were going to attempt this at home (not recommended), you would need a system that shreds, crushes then incinerates the motherboards. Then you would need a way to separate the metals from whatever plastics are left over. Then you would need to way to extract the PMs from the mass of metals you have. Certainly not as clean as clipping ram fingers and running them in AP.


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## billyb (Feb 12, 2012)

Thanks Ken & JB, that does help and I think that I'll hold on to the boards. Should I strip the mcc chips off the boards or leave them in place? Is it the chip itself or whats under the chip on the board?
Thanks again


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## Photobacterium (Feb 12, 2012)

billyb said:


> Thanks Ken & JB, that does help and I think that I'll hold on to the boards. Should I strip the mcc chips off the boards or leave them in place? Is it the chip itself or whats under the chip on the board?
> Thanks again



"there's gold in them there Integrated Circuits" ... IC's use all sorts of hybrid circuit technology, but it often comes down to a gold wire bond connecting a semiconductor die to a gold plated pad on a circuit package ... repeated over and over again. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Wirebond-ballbond.jpg/250px-Wirebond-ballbond.jpg

so the IC's (the 'chips') have gold in them.

also sometimes the chips are removed & re-used, i.e. not ground up to recover precious metals.


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## gold305 (Apr 11, 2012)

Im new to this and this is my first time doing any of this. i broke a cell phone apart and the board has little pieces of gold plated. How do i take the gold out? and whats running it through ap? please help me im so lost in all this but i realy want to get into it


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## martyn111 (Apr 11, 2012)

gold305 said:


> Im new to this and this is my first time doing any of this. i broke a cell phone apart and the board has little pieces of gold plated. How do i take the gold out? and whats running it through ap? please help me im so lost in all this but i realy want to get into it



AP = Acid peroxide, use that term in the search box, top right of your screen, or visit lasersteves website and watch the video he so kindly made to demonstrate how to do it.


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## hciic (May 5, 2012)

well i have seen some scrap of slot one processor boards is this ok to buy or what is the best price for buying these boards for refining. How much less quantity is ok.


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## gold4mike (May 9, 2012)

Boardsort currently pays $10.00 per pound for slot processors. If you could buy them for substantially less than that and learn the processes necessary to recover all the gold from the various parts of the processor you might do OK. 

You'll want to learn the AP method for recovering the gold from the fingers. View Samuel's tutorial on dealing with MCC's. Follow Lazer Steve's method for removal of solder mask to get any gold between layers of the board. Learn the various recovery methods for several types of CPU's. Then you'll want to incinerate any small IC's that were on the board and learn how to recover the gold from them.

All of these methods are explained in various posts here on the forum. Your FIRST learning experience should be how to use the Search Function to avoid having to ask questions that have been answered many times before.

Have fun!!


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