# RAM modules and memory analysis report



## kjavanb123 (Nov 11, 2013)

All,

I also did 190 grams of mixed shredded RAM and memory sticks, and that so far produced 22.5 grams of alloy metal, which analysis will be posted in this post.

Here is the alloy picture,



Regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Nov 11, 2013)

Kevin did you separate the fingers or just melt the lot?


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 11, 2013)

Spaceship,

No the whole piece were smelted.

Regards,
Kevin


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## stevem4323 (Nov 13, 2013)

hi how many sticks of ram in all did you use


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 14, 2013)

I didn't count them as these are traded per lbs or kg so I wanted to get an estimate per kg. Here is a photo of shredded ones and originals before shredding



And



Regards,
Kevin


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## mls26cwru (Nov 14, 2013)

someone correct me if i am wrong, but those smaller RAM sticks look like older printer memory which might skew your results if there was a bunch in your sample batch.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 14, 2013)

No those sticks have a black dot in the middle, all of these are RAM or memory, some of them tin plated.

Regards,
Kevin


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## mls26cwru (Nov 14, 2013)

kjavanb123 said:


> No those sticks have a black dot in the middle, all of these are RAM or memory, some of them tin plated.
> 
> Regards,
> Kevin




ahhh, okay. i was thinking that with fewer IC chips on the small ram modules could skew the results to the low side... it would be interesting to see how a batch of modern RAM (the bigger sticks with more chips on a stick) compares to the batch you are doing now. 

I am looking forward to seeing the results.


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## niteliteone (Nov 14, 2013)

mls26cwru said:


> kjavanb123 said:
> 
> 
> > No those sticks have a black dot in the middle, all of these are RAM or memory, some of them tin plated.
> ...


Those in pic 2 look like 30 pin SIMM's there is still a lot being sold and I think they actually yield higher than the newer DIMM's.
here is a link that shows the different types of memory;
http://www.google.com/imgres?client=firefox-a&hs=vH4&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&biw=964&bih=449&tbm=isch&tbnid=kNd04sjYW3R2mM:&imgrefurl=http://www.canadaram.com/glossaryofterms.htm&docid=zKBXSRInBSeN6M&imgurl=http://www.canadaram.com/images/RAMtypes2.jpg&w=680&h=375&ei=DiaFUv3dEOj3iwKwyYHYBA&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:4,s:0,i:102&iact=rc&page=2&tbnh=167&tbnw=302&start=3&ndsp=11&tx=142&ty=62


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## gold4mike (Nov 14, 2013)

There has been talk lately of having to sort RAM in the near future when selling to the board buyers. The newer DDR2 and DDR3 have very thin chips and (possibly) less PM's.


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## patnor1011 (Nov 19, 2013)

gold4mike said:


> There has been talk lately of having to sort RAM in the near future when selling to the board buyers. The newer DDR2 and DDR3 have very thin chips and (possibly) less PM's.



Or more, thin chips mean more units in weighted sample. More chips mean more wires.


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## g_axelsson (Nov 19, 2013)

patnor1011 said:


> gold4mike said:
> 
> 
> > There has been talk lately of having to sort RAM in the near future when selling to the board buyers. The newer DDR2 and DDR3 have very thin chips and (possibly) less PM's.
> ...


I just broke a DDR2 chip into tiny pieces. Finally I found the bond wires, they were tiny! The memory IC was a BGA type of package with two groups of solder balls along the long sides sitting on a thin glass fiber board, the die was mounted upside down on top of this board. The bond wires were bonded from the fiber board down to the die along the center line, resulting in a minimal length bond wire.

I think that the gold content is lower per memory stick just because the chips are so small. The fiber board will probably make recovery a bit trickier. The only base metals I could see were tin-solder in the balls and copper in the traces on the board.

I would probably treat the chips with HCl to remove the tin before incineration, then incinerating and crushing the ash where I would only remove the fine free flowing ash before dissolving copper in nitric acid to get rid of copper, and then finally a leach in AR to extract the gold.

Göran


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 28, 2013)

All,

Here is the icp result for mixed memory and ram cards I smelted,




So 190 grams of mixed ram sticks and memory, produced 22.5 grams of alloy metal, so 1000 kg would produce 118.421 kg of metal alloy, which 1 metric tonne of it according to analysis would have 1000 grams of gold, therefore 118.421 kg of metal alloy would have 118.4 grams of gold at 100% recovery.

Please advise.

Kevin


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## Anonymous (Nov 28, 2013)

Again Kevin, I would strongly recommend that you don't base a business decision on the assay you have had from this small batch. I can assure you that the results you have are glaringly inaccurate, and are based upon the small batch size, and the types of RAM shown in the pictures.

RAM memory yields far higher than 118.4g per tonne as an average across the board. It's actually far higher than the calculations presented for the mobile phone boards you posted on another thread.


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## ericrm (Nov 28, 2013)

did they remelt all the little beed together,or only took one for sampling, they probably not all have the same yield, did you tryed your thing on fiber cpu because i would love to see the result yield


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 28, 2013)

Spaceship,

I know what you are talking about, because RAMs are more expensive that cell phone boards hre in Dubai, so they must have more PMs.
Next time I will group them base on models and year and type, then incinerate, ball mill then smelt.

Regards
Kevin


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## butcher (Nov 29, 2013)

Depending on melting or smelting (with flux), base metals can be oxidized or reduced, this would change the amount of base metal, as end result, more or less depending on procedure used, and or flux used.

As ericrm, points out unless the metals were all melted together in a good mix and representative sample of the mixed metal bar was taken (usually by drilling the bar), the assay may not be a true representation of what you have. 

When I add up the percentage's of every metal in one of the assay results posted, I only see about 50%, this is confusing to me, if this was an assay on the melted metal what was the other 50% not noted?


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 29, 2013)

ericrm said:


> did they remelt all the little beed together,or only took one for sampling, they probably not all have the same yield, did you tryed your thing on fiber cpu because i would love to see the result yield



That is what puzzling to me, last time I melted the beads into one bar then send that to lab, but this time I sent the as beads so Might be possible they made a homogenuis sample and worked on that. 
I have incinerated one Chinese and one non-Chinese PC boards, and will ball mill them, then try it again.

Sample incinerated PC boards;



Regards,
Kevin


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## Platdigger (Nov 29, 2013)

spaceships, He did not say 118 grams per ton he said 1000.
One tenth of one percent. Or one kilogram per metric ton.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 29, 2013)

Platdiger,

Please note 1000 grams of gold per 1 metric tonne of alloy metal, not 1 metric tonne of RAM modules.

Butcher,
Please advise if the following procedure is assuring to get me a good estimation on assay,
1- Take one kilogram of same model and type RAM module, log every one of their models or ID number,
2- incinerate them
3- Ball mill the result
4- Pass it through a sieve of 10 mesh
5- Melt the metals on top of the seive into a bar
6- Drill the bar.
7- Send the drilled piece, and ashes that pass through the seieve to lab
8- fire assay both samples for gold and palladium, ICP them for the rest of elements.

Best regards,
Kevin


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## Platdigger (Nov 29, 2013)

oops, ok I see that now.
Man, that is low.


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## butcher (Nov 29, 2013)

Please advise if the following procedure is assuring to get me a good estimation on assay,
1- Take one kilogram of same model and type RAM module, log every one of their models or ID number,
2- incinerate them
3- Ball mill the result
4- Pass it through a sieve of 10 mesh
5- Melt the metals on top of the sieve into a bar
6- Drill the bar.
7- Send the drilled piece, and ashes that pass through the sieve to lab
8- fire assay both samples for gold and palladium, ICP them for the rest of elements.

This sounds good to me, but I am not skilled in sampling and assay.

The melt of the bar would be important, to get a good mix of alloy, the melt would need to be hot enough and stirred well to mix all of the metals involved ,you want these mixed together well, you do not want to be left with a bar with gold on the bottom and the lighter base metals on top of the bar.

I think the assay of the ash is also a good idea, as it would most likely contain some of the value.

4Metals and a few others have written some good posts on sampling your materials for tests.


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## Anonymous (Nov 29, 2013)

Platdigger said:


> oops, ok I see that now.
> Man, that is low.



Don't worry Plat. I had to read it about 6 times before I had the numbers nailed!


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 30, 2013)

All

I have incinerated these memory sticks just to confirm if this is correct. Please advise



Thanks
Kj


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## Anonymous (Nov 30, 2013)

Nope those are cooked not incinerated. It was pointed out in one of your other threads by someone (might have been Butcher) that to be incinerated they should be a grey powder. Not half formed memory chips.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 30, 2013)

Isnt incineration use heat and oxygen? That is what is used and picture may not do a good justice but the color is greyish.

Regards,
Kevin


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## philddreamer (Nov 30, 2013)

Kevin, I agree with Jon. Your material should look more like this. I used a propane torch to finish incinerating the chips in order to get them that color.

Take care!
Phil


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 30, 2013)

What temprature needed to incinerate? This waster incinerator unit I have tested produce 900c plus heat and oxygen and burns most of the smokes, so should I increase the heat to certain number?


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## 9kuuby9 (Nov 30, 2013)

kjavanb123 said:


> What temperature needed to incinerate? This waster incinerator unit I have tested produce 900c plus heat and oxygen and burns most of the smokes, so should I increase the heat to certain number?



Your setup is fine as it is, You should examine the time frame you are attempting to successfully accomplish the process.

I'd suggest you let it continue until its color has become light grey to white-ish. as suggested above.

If it takes too long then decrease the batch size.

And a general checkup is also advised, like for instance is their sufficient oxygen supplied or has it truly reached that exact temperature instead om maybe assumptions and guesswork?


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## sagar96 (Dec 10, 2013)

g_axelsson said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> > gold4mike said:
> ...



wait what, there are gold bond wires in the actual green plastic of the board?


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## g_axelsson (Dec 10, 2013)

sagar96 said:


> wait what, there are gold bond wires in the actual green plastic of the board?


No, in the chips mounted on the board.

Göran


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## Alentia (Feb 20, 2014)

kjavanb123 said:


> What temprature needed to incinerate? This waster incinerator unit I have tested produce 900c plus heat and oxygen and burns most of the smokes, so should I increase the heat to certain number?



Your temperature is accurate, but most likely there is no oxygen in between the boards (they stuck together) and therefore, they remain "black". When I incinerate chips I add them in small numbers just to cover the base of the vessel, when they are "cooked" and I add next layer. When vessel is half full, I empty it.

The problem in your list of procedures is ball mill. That is why assay shows low values. When you ball mill (half or fully) incinerated boards gold will be "lost" in ball mill, it would stick to the walls almost as plating.

When boards/ram are fully incinerated, you should be able to crash them with mortar and pestle very easy and than melt with excess borax and soda ash at around 1200-1300C.

You should be able to get single ball of mix metals. Scrape borax from crucible walls with rounded scraped while its hot and liquid. You probably will not be able to scrap all in a single pass. Once borax cools when you scrape, add more borax and some kryolite and put it back in the furnace. Let it melt and scrape again. Dissolve borax in dilute H2SO4, may take 1-2 days at room temperature, if you loose some metals in reaction with H2SO4, not so big of an issue, you final analysis will not be materially affected by much. You will recover small balls from borax. Remelt big ball with small balls. Now, you final alloy piece will be clean enough for chemical analysis.

You can either do chemical assay yourself or give the lab actual ball. Drilling the hole and giving a sample will be inaccurate as you have mix of metals with various consistency across the ball. The center will consist of mostly non precious metals except at the bottom. There is Pt in old 30pin ram sticks and absence of it in your lab report would mean it has been lost in the process.

Running 2Kg of old mixed ram (gold and tin plated) EDO (Extended Data Output) and SIMM (Single Inline Memory Module) yielded for me 1gr of gold and 0.05gr of Pt. That was my first ever try on chips incineration and I made many mistakes. I would have probably recovered more now.


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## kjavanb123 (Feb 20, 2014)

Alentia,

Thanks for your post, I used induction furnace, and according to induction that should mix the metals at thier atoms level, so there should be a mix.

Regards,
Kj


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## Alentia (Feb 20, 2014)

And one more thing...

I have noticed you have a step to sieve. Even it is #10 sieve, you still can loose micron size gold wires through your sieve. Just melt everything together.

Even though induction melts metals at their atom level, Au, Pt, Pd will settle at the bottom as being heavy when you cast them. You may try to utilize cone mold, it will be easier to see even with the naked eye when you have PMs at the needle of the cone.


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