Anything of value in old junk computers?

74duster318 · Feb 18, 2009

I've heard of certain chips having some value. Some precious metals. Anything worth pulling out of it before trashing it? It's already in a jillion pieces. It's an older computer so nothing is worth anything as far as performance goes. Thanks.
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ejholmgren · Feb 18, 2009

74duster318 said:
I've heard of certain chips having some value. Some precious metals. Anything worth pulling out of it before trashing it? It's already in a jillion pieces. It's an older computer so nothing is worth anything as far as performance goes. Thanks.

Unless you're willing to work in China for $.15/hr which your employer makes $.30/hr off of ... no.

dennis461 · Feb 18, 2009

Donate it

ejholmgren said:
Unless you're willing to work in China for $.15/hr which your employer makes $.30/hr off of ... no.

Put it back together, load old software, donate it, deduct from taxes.

fleck · Feb 18, 2009

LOL motherboards are made with gold, but that's about it. GL extracting it.

74duster318 · Feb 18, 2009

Cool. I was just curious. It's too far gone to save, and especially to put back together. Nothing was working right on it , and I was lucky enough to get anything off of it.

I'm keeping the cooling fans and mounting them above my desk, or something stupid... :icon_idea:

Maybe one of those electric fan superchargers... YEAHHHH! :icon_rofl:

But seriously, thanks guys.

Nhaz · Feb 18, 2009

There is gold in most of those chips, there is also some rare earths in others.

All is worth recovering.

If you do it in 40 gallon drum lots.

a friend of mine is a computer recycler. he hires cheap labor and uses a air chisel and just strips the boards and then another person sorts the left overs.

He also recycles the steel and aluminum and the plastics.

He usually deals in large transport loads before he starts seeing good returns.

BUT. pull the main chip off the board and look at the backside where the pins are.

You can see they are gold coloured. and yes its real gold. Gold can be applied in extremely thin layers. Inside the chips casing itself the wires running from the pins to the real chip are also gold. again very thin.

Wicked_Sludge · Feb 18, 2009

old computer power supplies are good for 12volt needs around the house...if you have any (you could power your fans with it).

74duster318 · Feb 18, 2009

That's what I thought.

Just for fun, I did pull the chipsets and noticed the gold you were talking about. Also, it seems most of the connections are gold plated. There's even a fair amount of copper in some parts. None of it is really worth pulling, unless you're really bored. Which I am.

I actually recycled most of it.
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Southern_Trendkill · Feb 18, 2009

Don't bother. That gold plating they use in computers is measured in molecules. You could strip the computer and get less than 1/1000th of an ounce.

Mark_88 · Feb 19, 2009

If you have any older RAM from it you might get a good price for it...it's more expensive than the newer DDR now...I know because I recently priced some 512K sticks and they are nearly three times the price of DDR...

Anything of value in old junk computers?

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