How much gold can I get from old computer components?

Gold is an amazing conductor, which is why it is used as a coating in many electronic devices, especially dynamic data transmission components such as RAM. If you are in the hands of old computer components and wonder how much gold you can extract from them, please read this article!

Question 1: Which part of the computer has gold?

Computer parts such as CPU, RAM, motherboard, drive, CD and DVD all have gold and other precious metals such as silver palladium . Basic metals such as copper, copper and tin alloys, Aluminum, lead, . are also there.

Power supply, keyboard, CPU fan does not have gold but there is a little silver in the keyboard.

The CPU has gold and gold plated on the pins, small gold strands inside. That's part of the reason that CPUs are quite expensive.

How much gold can I get from old computer components? Picture 1
The CPU pins are gold plated

RAM has gold plating on the pins and gold wires inside the chips (QFP and PLCC) mounted on RAM, this chip has some silver. Palladium is in capacitors mounted on RAM.

On the motherboard, gold-plated pins, BGA, QFP, PLCC pins mounted on the board all have gold and silver.

Question 2: How to extract gold from computer parts?

Nitrate or cyanide processes can be used to remove gold from pins and connections. From the CPU can take gold through aqua regia. Pyrolysis and hydrolysis are used to recover gold from computer chips.

Question 3: Is gold available on mobile phones?

43% of the world's total gold production is used in electronics. This is hard to believe but true. And mobile phones also have a large amount of gold in them. If you open the mobile phone, you can see the contact points, the pins are gold plated. The mobile phone motherboard has both gold and silver. The ceramic capacitors used in the phone have palladium. Chips on the motherboard have a lot of gold and silver. To get gold on mobile phones, they must be soaked in chemicals.

Faced with the appeal, Cody's Cody's Lab has studied and learned all the sophisticated processes to remove gold from old, unused computer parts. You can see how that process takes place in the video below.

(Video source: Cody's Lab YouTube Channel)

When all is finished, Cody receives one third of impure gold. In the case of the best gold price, you will earn about 10USD (200,000 VND). And it's definitely less than the amount you need to spend on buying materials for recycling. But if done on a giant scale, it is different, it will certainly bring in profits, even huge profits.

So, if you have the idea of ​​splitting the gold from some computer components you get, leave it. Just time-consuming and dangerous (because the process of extracting this gold requires a lot of strong acids) is not economical. See to know. Unless you plan to switch jobs, buying and recycling electronic components, for example, it sounds like an interesting way to get rich: D.

See more:

1. How is the CPU produced?
2. Getting rich is not difficult thanks to these 10 simple tips!