Feasibility Analysis of Gold Extraction from Waste Electronic Waste such as Circuit Boards, CPUs, Memory, Motherboards, and Hard Drives
Feasibility Analysis of Gold Extraction from Waste Electronic Waste such as Circuit Boards, CPUs, Memory, Motherboards, and Hard Drives
Feasibility Analysis of Gold Extraction from Waste Electronic Waste such as Circuit Boards, CPUs, Memory, Motherboards, and Hard Drives Not many people believe that CPUs contain gold, right? Many people sell their old Pentium CPUs for 5-10 yuan each, but some old Pentiums actually have a very high gold content! Just the gold extraction alone is worth 60 yuan! The gold content of CPUs varies depending on the model! A good CPU can yield one gram of gold from two CPUs, while a lower-quality one requires around 80 yuan to extract one gram. For details, please refer to: The gold-containing parts of a CPU are mainly the pins, the housing, and the gold foil on the silicon wafer surface. In the earliest CPUs, the higher the price and the more outdated the manufacturing process, the higher the gold content! This is because more advanced manufacturing processes result in smaller silicon wafers and smaller CPU sizes! Several CPUs with High Gold Content 1. Early IBM Power series, with a gold casing. 2. Older Pentium series CPUs, with the Pentium Pro probably having the highest gold content. 3. Early AMD CPUs: Current CPUs are still expensive, and no one has used them much, so they probably don't have much gold content. Advanced manufacturing processes, smaller silicon wafers, and smaller CPU sizes, coupled with fierce competition, led to cost-cutting. Now you know why Core processors have such low gold content, and why the 0.065nm process is cheaper than the 0.09nm process! Actually, many electronic waste items have quite a high gold content. Typical examples include: 1. The northbridge and southbridge chips from old motherboards 2. The motherboards from outdated high-end mobile phones! They have a very high gold content! Motherboard: A: CPU location. Currently, older machines entering their obsolescence mainly use Pentium 2 and 3 series CPUs, such as those with clock speeds of 433, 667, 800, and 950. Currently, the price of a 433MHz CPU is generally around 5 yuan per chip, while 667MHz, 800MHz, and 950MHz CPUs are all green-plated boards, which are less sought after due to their lower gold content. B – Known as the "Northbridge" chip, it is the second most important component on the motherboard after the CPU. D – This is the integrated sound card chip (only found on integrated motherboards). E – This is the PCI slot. To ensure a secure connection between the motherboard and expansion cards and to guarantee stable data transmission, the expansion cards with this interface are generally gold-plated. Main Components of a Computer Motherboard: CPU – Older machines currently entering the obsolescence mainly use Pentium 2 and 3 series CPUs, such as those with clock speeds of 433MHz, 667MHz, 800MHz, and 950MHz. Currently, the price of a 433MHz CPU is generally around 5 yuan per chip, while 667MHz, 800MHz, and 950MHz CPUs are all green-plated boards, which are less sought after due to their lower gold content. The Northbridge chip is the second most important component on the motherboard after the CPU. It is responsible for all communication, control, and data transmission between the CPU and other components on the motherboard. The Southbridge chip is responsible for communication, control, and data transmission between external devices, interfaces, and various components on the motherboard. PCI slots (mainly for various expansion cards such as network cards, sound cards, and data acquisition cards). The darker one on the right is the AGP slot (used only for graphics cards). To ensure a secure connection between the motherboard and the expansion card and to guarantee stable data transmission, the connectors of these expansion cards are usually plated with gold, known as "gold fingers." All computer circuit boards contain gold, just in varying amounts, with silver generally being more abundant. MLCCs contain a certain amount of palladium and silver. What is an MLCC? MLCC stands for Small Package Multilayer High-Frequency Ceramic Capacitor. These products exhibit significant low-power characteristics in GSM, CDMA, cordless phones, Bluetooth, and GPS systems with T/R module circuitry. It is widely used in various high-frequency circuits, such as oscillation and timing circuits. Its low-power performance is also evident in power decoupling, filtering, and low-frequency signal coupling circuits in MP4 players, laptops, and digital cameras, where high ripple currents are present. Other – Motherboards differ from ordinary circuit boards in their complex structure, typically consisting of 6-8 layers. Therefore, the boards themselves are rich in precious metals such as copper, silver, gold, and palladium. Due to their complex structure and high power consumption, the heat sinks used are usually made of aluminum or copper, which are also valuable. Currently, the market price for computer motherboards is generally between 10-40 yuan per piece, with each board weighing approximately 600-1000 grams. Bulk purchases typically fetch between 20,000 and 42,000 yuan. Even after deducting various costs, the profit from disassembling them is still considerable.
