# Hard Drive Board & Gold Flash Board



## snoman701 (Jul 20, 2017)

Hard drive board - The prices packagers buy it at is usually around $10 / lb, give or take a couple dollars. Does it actually refine out at that in gold, or is it the tantallum and palladium increasing the value? Just thinking about buying a load of hard drives and taking the boards off, it just takes a while and I don't want to waste my time if a lot of the value is in the tantallum caps.

Gold Flash Board - Talking flash only, still populated with IC's, flatpacks, square chips, etc, but no BGA's. The best comparison I can think of is going to be consumer grade wireless routers. Any rough ideas? Can't really photograph it, as it's encapsulated. When you chip away the encapsulation epoxy the components come with it. It may actually be full depth gold plating instead of just a flash, but I'm planning for flash only for now. 

I'm not yet set up to be able to ash one or two of them to get an approximate value unfortunately. Hopefully only a couple more weeks, buying the last five sheets of drywall tomorrow and hanging them over the weekend. Then I've just got to poke the hole in the roof. Picked up my hood last week.


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## kernels (Jul 20, 2017)

Gold plating on boards with surface mount components fitted is 'always' going to be ENIG because hard gold does not solder well. There are exceptions, but they tend to be very old test equipment, and were probably through-hole anyway.

Hard drive boards are good value because the fibreglass is very thin and the ICs, even those with legs return very well for their weight. I have never worked out what the average value per boards works out to, will count the boards next time I do a load. 

Overall they are just good boards because their total PM content to weight ratio if good.


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## snoman701 (Jul 21, 2017)

kernels said:


> Gold plating on boards with surface mount components fitted is 'always' going to be ENIG because hard gold does not solder well. There are exceptions, but they tend to be very old test equipment, and were probably through-hole anyway.
> 
> Hard drive boards are good value because the fibreglass is very thin and the ICs, even those with legs return very well for their weight. I have never worked out what the average value per boards works out to, will count the boards next time I do a load.
> 
> Overall they are just good boards because their total PM content to weight ratio if good.



Knowing value of one board is pretty irrelevant, as long as you aren't buying them by the drive. I actually used to know the numbers....lb board:lb drive, but that was a long time ago.

Got the insulation up...gotta finish stapling, then hang the drywall. Getting there!

But it's 1 already! wowsa


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## silversaddle1 (Jul 21, 2017)

One of the biggest problems with HDD boards as far as figuring yields is that there are so many different styles and types of boards that you just can't get an accurate number. We are sitting on about 600 pounds of HDD boards right now and just looking at them you can see all the different types. Also, as the tec improves, the boards are getting smaller and smaller. On good note, as the changeover to solid state progresses in the business world, we are seeing more and more of them entering the scrap market. Great thing about those solid state drives is they have very good quality boards inside and my buy buys them at gold edge memory prices. :G


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