In Pictures: Tom's Hardware Recovers Gold And Silver From CPUs
A while back, we did a little do-it-yourself salvaging of gold from motherboards (Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?). But that’s not the only part of a computer where the rustless, unalterable metal is used. It’s also in CPUs. Specifically, the element is used on the pins and on the mounting pads of the processor dies. Also, the small wires that connect the pads and the pins are made of gold.
Here's the hard part, though: recovering the precious metal through do-it-yourself techniques. In this piece, we're also going to recover another precious metal: silver.
Please note that the chemicals used in this demonstration are extremely dangerous, especially in the concentrations used. Therefore, we strongly discourage you from attempting to reproduce this experiment at home.
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A lot of work for that little BB.
It's kind of sad to see these processors get destroyed, I mean some of those are classics that would be cool to have as a keepsake.
And here I thought high school chemistry was useless. Don't try this at home though...well unless you want to see how fast chlorine gas kills everything around you.
i have an old pentium MMX on display (in my room on a shelf where all my unused computer hardware goes)
Woah! Better keep those AMD CPU's- those are ancient relics of when AMD used to actively compete with Intel!
I love these articles!
huh, didnt know gold could become a compound.
very nice article.
High School Chemistry FTW!
Simple electrolysis can get it to even higher purity. 999 might be difficult but 916 n above should be easy. Good enough for a ring/pendant. Heck, with enough CPU u can even engraved "Intel Inside"
I knew a teacher that used to collect and strip as much stuff from components and then send it up to a company that recycles it and pays you a cut.
Assuming you get free cpus and your time is free ... How much is the materials vs the silver/gold selling price? Not that I'd do it, but just curious.
And how much is that gold BB worth?
Chlorine gas is WMD as long as I know. (first used in WW1) Shouldn't FBI be ll over your asses?
Every1 be careful, it may suffocate u.
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/chlorine/basics/facts.asp
Definatly do not try this at home without good knowledge of chemistry and proper ventilation!
For anyone who forgot, exotermic reactions means that things get very hot (as there is spare energy from the process)
And yes, chlorine it very toxic, not that it takes more than 10 secs to make with remidies found commonly in a danish home >.>
i think if u calculate the cost of chemicals + resulting gold piece < cost of the cpu's as relics.
I couldn't help but laugh so hard when I saw the final result. XD
The BBC done this in nang goes the theory. They used mobile phones and ram too. How much did the silver and gold come to especially vs buying the chemicals to produce them. Surely copper would be worth something too atm, the amount of street lights that have had the wiring stripped from them just for the copper!
yeah processors and motherboard have gold in contacts... but hard to to some work on it.
our not.
the final process is more expansive than the gold... but we need this for a green world
Careful about what you destroy as some are worth much more than their base metal content and are very rare. Boards however go for it as most eventually become non recoverable as far as working is concerned.