# Motherboards: sell complete or attempt to process?



## raa (Feb 27, 2017)

Greetings from the UK

This is my first post here but I have been lurking for several weeks. First of all can I say what an excellent resource this forum is and thank all those who have invested time contributing to it. 

I became interested in this subject because I have a steady amount of e-waste coming my way which I don’t have to pay for; say around 20 desktop PC a month, plus various ancillaries. I have been separating the components and collecting piles of RAM, CPU, Slot cards and motherboards.

I have been slowly reading Hoke and trawling the forum for information on the various processes. 

I would like to do some refining on a small scale so I have been removing the gold fingers, IC chips and pins from the slot cards and RAM. I have then discarded the depopulated boards.

I live in a fairly built up area so any processes involving incineration are out of the question, also I don’t want to create a lot of waste chemicals. I have a plan to eventually recover the gold from fingers using the AP method and to make a small sulphuric acid cell to process pins. I am a long way from buying in any acids but this is the general direction I want to go in. 

At the moment I don’t really see how I could make a decent job of processing motherboards, I mean I could harvest some chips along with the CPU socket and some gold plated pins, but that would leave a lot of semi valuable materials on the boards (it seems like that to me anyway). So my first questions are: What do people do with their motherboards? Strip or sell? And is there much advantage in saving up a large quantity, say 250KG vs selling in small 20 kg lots.

Thanks 
Mark

Edit: 'discarded' in this context means taken to the local recycling centre where they have a dedicated container for e-waste.


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## Geo (Feb 27, 2017)

It seems like you answered your own question. Should you sell or process? Since you have ruled out the possibility of processing, you are left with selling. First, make sure what the going prices are. Find out if it's a flat price per kilo or if they itemize. If it's a flat rate, cherry pick the best parts and sell whats left. If they itemize, determine whether the price of assorted parts warrants the time for taking them apart. Even though it may be a lower price per kilo, the value of selling them whole might outweigh the benefits of stripping them.


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## nickvc (Feb 28, 2017)

We have members UK based who would possibly buy those boards, if you post pictures of what you have perhaps you can get some dialogue going and reach a satisfactory outcome, with boards they really are not the material for the home| hobby refiner, as Geo has pointed out some material is not easy to refine so cherry pick what you can process, even the base metals have some value, the money you raise can always be used to buy gold :idea:


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## rickbb (Feb 28, 2017)

I'm in a similar position, not really in a place to do a full recovery from boards and chips so I cherry pick the low hanging fruit and sell the rest.

Shop around you may have someone who will buy the boards from you, don't throw any away. Here I have a company that will buy almost everything, no matter the size or quality of yield. It's all worth something.


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## Shaul (Mar 26, 2017)

Before you part with any board, check the plating underneath the (green) solder mask. Scrape away a bit of the (usually) green coating to check the plating. With computers, motherboards are usually not gold plated, it's more common with cards and mostly on older models. But with Medical electronics, almost all boards (doesn't matter the size) are completely gold-plated (underneath the Solder Mask).


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## kernels (Mar 26, 2017)

Shaul said:


> Before you part with any board, check the plating underneath the (green) solder mask. Scrape away a bit of the (usually) green coating to check the plating. With computers, motherboards are usually not gold plated, it's more common with cards and mostly on older models. But with Medical electronics, almost all boards (doesn't matter the size) are completely gold-plated (underneath the Solder Mask).



Sure, but if that gold is soldered to, then it is almost always ENIG on modern-ish boards. The only boards confirmed to have hard gold plating across the whole PCB is very old electronics test gear. Even with a large amount of surface area, ENIG is so thin that it is a complete waste of time to recover with an acid based process.


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## tortuga09 (Mar 27, 2017)

Good evening.

I am pjesque in the same reflection as you,

I have a company that buys me cards and components at a given price,

I resell to him all the poor cards but I excel the golden contacts and on this card put poor all the component that interests me like the MCLL.

I test the graphics cards and cpu if their value and corecte I resell them to the room much more expensive than the price to recycling,

But then I begin to have almost 100 kg of pico of connectors to be counted in bulk for 7 kg of connection between 0.700 grams to 1 kg of pico.

Sorry, I use a translator of the net, I do not master your language at all.


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