any website that can tell me where the gold, palladium, platinum is to be found in motherboards of old computers?

Mar 28, 2007 2 Replies
A

I was searching for a website that can specifically tell me which components of old computers are precious metals to be found. Which components have the dangerous mercury?



Anyone have a website. It would be nice if someone posted a picture of a motherboard and pointed to which components contain the metals. Now I know that the salvaging usually relies on aqua regia to dissolve. But all I want to do is save the undissolved components.



Thanks in advance



Archimedes Plutonium

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B

Mainstream consumer electronics have very little precious metals.

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F

Save for those apparently golden colored contacts on boards that plugged into the mother board. If they were just plain old copper they would soon develop oxide coatings that would make the system behave poorly as contact resistance varied. Reseating the boards eventually also makes for poor contacts as the soft gold plating gets worn off. But there is a very small amount of gold plating on quality board contacts.

Mercury in fluorescent lights (long tubes or coiled ones) is a more significant source than anything found in the usual computer. FK

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