Pinless CPU's - what to do?

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bemate

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 23, 2016
Messages
72
When going through my various computer scrap, I have come across some CPU'S without pins, just small plated dots on the underside. I suppose this would be easiest to just drop in AP with my trimmed fingers, but I could find no reference to these kinds of CPU'S in the forum... Does anyone have any good input on how to best treat these?image.jpg
 
I scrape the MLCC's off and save them. I pull the heat sink and save them in another pile pile for later use. The body with the gold dots will be run in AP. The amount of gold is almost nothing and the the heat sinks will be worth more than the gold. I strip the outer layer off the heat sink and use them for copper. Most people will tell you to throw body out and that is not bad advice. It comes down to what works best for you.

Edit for clarity.
 
I didn't think the plates contain much, but just tossing them in with the other stuff in AP will do for me. As for the mlcc's, I don't bother with them. I had scraped off about 200 grams of mlcc's and decided to check with a magnet, and all but 8 or 10 mlcc's were base metal ones. Considering the work to harvest them, I'm not wasting time on them. I had hoped to be able to scrounge a few grams of Pd from them, but it was not meant to be... :(
 
Ewaste all revolves around quantities. I have around 2 pounds of non magnectic MLCC's now. They add up slow but I work on them once other materials are caught up. I haven't collected enough to consider what I will do with them yet. I get CPU's in mixed lots so I have to take them when they are there. Luckily I get the majority of mine at a good price. I just stripped 25 pounds of heat sinks and now have them ready to use as a collector metal in my furnace. It all adds up over time and MLCC's take very little space to store once removed from the boards.
 
Dilute sulfuric, usually about 25% strength. I just let them soak until they are clean, if I need them faster I will use small amounts of 3% peroxide. With the peroxide I expect it to take around 18 to 24 hours.

Edit to add: I do use heat on them but not much. I usually run them about 110F to 120F.
 
I scrape the MLCC's off and save them. I pull the heat sink and save them in another pile pile for later use. The body with the gold dots will be run in AP. The amount of gold is almost nothing and the the heat sinks will be worth more than the gold. I strip the outer layer off the heat sink and use them for copper. Most people will tell you to throw body out and that is not bad advice. It comes down to what works best for you.

Edit for clarity.
Hey shark i don't know if your still active but I wanted to ask how do u strip the gold from heat sink? I ended up with about 4 lbs of these things and I'm gonna process them for the small amount of gold they have cause they are just sitting around my work area and I'm low on other materials to work. If shark isn't around and anyone else has an idea I just don't wanna waste the amount of chems it will take to disovle the copper and nickel plating.
 
Dilute sulfuric, usually about 25% strength. I just let them soak until they are clean, if I need them faster I will use small amounts of 3% peroxide. With the peroxide I expect it to take around 18 to 24 hours.

Edit to add: I do use heat on them but not much. I usually run them about 110F to 120F.
Nvm shark found my answer. Pays to read down the post haha.
 
The modern MLCCs are almost entirely nickel-containing. If you get hundreds of pounds, it'd be worth processing for nickel, but a few pounds of magnetics will yield pretty much nothing in terms of PMs,

I sort out into 3 classes: non-magentic (the best, silver and Pd), weakly magnetic (some contain silver, and even a small amount of Pd), and strongly magnetic, which stick firmly even to a typical fridge magnet (99% or higher will have nothing but nickel).
 

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