Pinless CPU's - what to do?

[bemate]

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?

 

[Shark]

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.

 

[bemate]

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...

 

[Shark]

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.

 

[Dpetes]

Shark, What do you use to strip the heat sinkers clean?

 

[Shark]

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.

 

[Dpetes]

Thanks for the reply :!:

 

[Emryst]

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.

 

[Emryst]

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.

 

[Alondro]

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).

 

[kurtak]

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).

Per the bold print (above quote) - are you sure about that ?

I ask because there are "basically" two types MLCCs --- PM (Precious Metal) MLCCs & BM (Base Metal) MLCCs

It was in the late 1990s that they switched from making PM/MLCCs to making BM/MLCCs & (at least as I understand it) when they made that switch they replaced the palladium with nickel & replaced the silver with copper

In other words the PM/MLCCs were made with silver & palladium --- whereas the BM/MLCCs are made with copper & nickel

At least according to Wikipedia -------------

Originally, MLCC electrodes were constructed out of noble metals such as silver and palladium which can withstand high sintering temperatures of 1200 to 1400 °C without readily oxidizing. These noble metal electrode (NME) capacitors offered very good electrical properties.

However, a surge in prices of noble metals in the late 1990s greatly increased manufacturing costs; these pressures resulted in the development of capacitors that used cheaper metals like copper and nickel

I have processed quite a few kilos of the PM/MLCCs but have never bothered with processing the BM/MLCCs which is why I ask about ---

and strongly magnetic, which stick firmly even to a typical fridge magnet (99% or higher will have nothing but nickel).

What test(s) have you run on the "strong" magnetic MLCCs to confirm they are nothing but nickel ?

Kurt

 

[anachronism]

Personally I trade them and use the money to buy stuff that I can make better margin on. They are low yield, high cost/effort to process. Great for experimental processes but not a lot else.

 

[kurtak]

Personally I trade them and use the money to buy stuff that I can make better margin on. They are low yield, high cost/effort to process. Great for experimental processes but not a lot else.

I assume you are talking about the PM/MLCCs & not the BM/MLCCs & if so I would agree that yield is not worth the cost & effort by way of leaching process

Leaching PM/MLCCs creates a HUGE mess due to the ceramic breaking down to a VERY fine clay like mud that is impossible to wash all the values out of & is a filtering nightmare --- which is why I have posted MANY times that leaching MLCCs is NOT the way to process them

The larger the batch the larger the loss of values you will have due to the fact that it is impossible to wash the values out of that ceramic mud

On the other hand - in my opinion they are well worth processing if you are set up for smelting

With smelting you will get much better yield with less cost & effort

To put it somewhat in perspective --- with leaching are are likely to only get 60 - 70% recover & at best 80% recovery with a LOT of cost/effort for that recovery

With smelting you should achieve near 100% recovery (95 - 97%) recovery with much less cost/effort

Kurt

 

[anachronism]

I assume you are talking about the PM/MLCCs & not the BM/MLCCs & if so I would agree that yield is not worth the cost & effort by way of leaching process

Leaching PM/MLCCs creates a HUGE mess due to the ceramic breaking down to a VERY fine clay like mud that is impossible to wash all the values out of & is a filtering nightmare --- which is why I have posted MANY times that leaching MLCCs is NOT the way to process them

The larger the batch the larger the loss of values you will have due to the fact that it is impossible to wash the values out of that ceramic mud

On the other hand - in my opinion they are well worth processing if you are set up for smelting

With smelting you will get much better yield with less cost & effort

To put it somewhat in perspective --- with leaching are are likely to only get 60 - 70% recover & at best 80% recovery with a LOT of cost/effort for that recovery

With smelting you should achieve near 100% recovery (95 - 97%) recovery with much less cost/effort

Kurt

Hi Kurt

You'd need an awful lot of these to recover any reasonable amount of PGM. If any at all, because many don't have any in whatsoever.

 

[patnor1011]

Kurt, I think Jon was saying about trading pinless cpu for something better.

 

[Alondro]

Per the bold print (above quote) - are you sure about that ?

I ask because there are "basically" two types MLCCs --- PM (Precious Metal) MLCCs & BM (Base Metal) MLCCs

It was in the late 1990s that they switched from making PM/MLCCs to making BM/MLCCs & (at least as I understand it) when they made that switch they replaced the palladium with nickel & replaced the silver with copper

In other words the PM/MLCCs were made with silver & palladium --- whereas the BM/MLCCs are made with copper & nickel

At least according to Wikipedia -------------

Originally, MLCC electrodes were constructed out of noble metals such as silver and palladium which can withstand high sintering temperatures of 1200 to 1400 °C without readily oxidizing. These noble metal electrode (NME) capacitors offered very good electrical properties.

However, a surge in prices of noble metals in the late 1990s greatly increased manufacturing costs; these pressures resulted in the development of capacitors that used cheaper metals like copper and nickel

I have processed quite a few kilos of the PM/MLCCs but have never bothered with processing the BM/MLCCs which is why I ask about ---

What test(s) have you run on the "strong" magnetic MLCCs to confirm they are nothing but nickel ?

Kurt

They have copper, but I don't really count that as a PM, and it's so little it's not even worth mentioning. I crushed and dissolved some in nitric, tested with stannous (nothing) and then cemented on steel wire to see what dropped: only a tiny bit of copper. Then zinc to drop the metal still giving the solution a green color. The resulting powder was magnetic, and since there's no iron in MLCCs, it had to be nickel.

I did a video about two years ago on various batches of weakly magnetic MLCCs I could sort roughly into boards manufactured in a range of couple years at a time, from about 2006 to 2016. Some gave a little silver. One batch tested positive for palladium as well as silver. And one batch had nothing of value. Oddly the negative batch was in the middle years. The newest bunch had some silver, not much but it was there. So, that's why I decided to lump all of them together for later processing, since it seems the PM content of the weakly magnetic MLCCs is rather random.