Does anyone know if there are precious metals in the IC cos found on ram sticks? Am i wasting time by removing them? Or how about the newer chips? The ones that don't have metal wires on the sides.
You most certainly do not waste time collecting them. And yes, newer IC on ram are BGA type and do contain more gold (number/mass ratio) than older IC.
If you ever wonder whether some electronic board/part contains PMs, a good system is to check the scrap value. You will notice that the scrap value of ram (boardsort etc.) is more than the value of the gold on the fingers. So, either someone is making big losses or there are precious metals in the chips.
The really interesting thing is that with some ram cards, there is more gold in the chips than on the fingers.