What kind of electronics contain gold

They also have properties like corrosion resistance and hardness that are important in electronic devices. Volume is the key. As great as it would be to get decent money from the gold in your old cell phone, t he fact is p rocessing costs are higher than what the precious metal ultimately will end up being worth.

There are three ways that a retired device can find value in a new life: resale of the whole device, resale of its parts, or resale of the material once it has been shredded. The path that any given device takes depends on its condition , how modern its components are, storage and RAM capacity, and other factors. If a device is truly end-of-life, it will be destroyed, and the separated recyclable materials will be sold b ack into the manufacturing stream.

That would include any precious metals in the device. Precious metal values can fluctuate from day to day, hour to hour and even minute to minute. In other words, even if the precious metal were already separated from the rest, the value would depend on its grade, i. Obviously, metals with higher grades are more valuable because they do not need to be refined to separate them from everything else. They also have properties like corrosion resistance and hardness that are important in electronic devices.

Volume is the key. The amount of any given metal in a single device is scarce. It takes a large volume of devices, or of component parts like RAM, to accumulate enough gold, silver, palladium or other rare metals to see a decent payoff from it. As great as a gold rush would be, the other thing limiting the value of IT equipment is the processing costs, which are often higher than what the precious metal ultimately will end up being worth.

There are three ways that a retired device can find value in a new life: resale of the whole device, resale of its parts, or resale of the material once it has been shredded. The path that any given device takes depends on its condition, how modern its components are, storage and RAM capacity, and other factors.

If a device is truly end-of-life, it will be destroyed in bulk with similar devices, and the separated recyclable materials will be sold as scrap for manufacturing. That would include any precious metals in the device — but those will make up only a miniscule fraction of the original weight. Scrap commodities are traded by weight, and an 8-lb laptop or lb monitor may only contain a few grams of precious metals at most.

Find out how much gold your computers might be hiding. Did you know your old electronics, like your ex-computer, have actual gold inside of them? But where, and can you extract it? Not only that, but they can also include other precious metals like silver or palladium. Read on to find out more. It is a known fact that many computers and electronic devices contain some amount of precious metals, like gold. Located on the printed circuit boards , processors, and other components, some electronics can have relatively high levels of the stuff.

With regards to gold alone, the main PC parts containing gold include, but are not limited to:. But gold isn't the only precious metal you'll likely find in your electronics. Some other common precious metals commonly used in electronic devices include :. So, as you see, rather than just chucking away your old computer, it might be worth doing some scavenging.

With all those components having at least some gold and other precious metals in them, could you get rich dismantling and extracting them? But that's not counting the cost of removing it. However, the actual value will depend entirely on the type of e-waste you are looking at, of course.

For example, industrial video equipment often has a proportionally higher amount of gold, sometimes in excess of 56 grams per machine.

After all the labor needed to physically break apart the computer and extract the gold, this hardly seems worth the effort.

In fact, you'll probably find yourself out of pocket with such an enterprise on a small number of machines. In some circumstances, computer components might be worth more intact, for reuse and resale. However, if you can recycle this kind of waste by the the ton, the financial outlook begins to make more sense. This is especially true if you are buying e-waste in bulk at next to nothing. Oftentimes, most companies who specialize in this industry focus on circuit boards, CPUs, and motherboards as these tend to have the highest grade gold.

In fact, compared to traditional gold mining, one tonne of e-waste can contain 40 to times more gold than actual gold ore! And there is a lot of it. According to sources like The World Counts, somewhere in the order of 50 million tons of e-waste are discarded every year. The USA alone creates about 11 million tons of e-waste every single year. Of that, a negligible There you have it gold from electronics, one troy Oz is grains and I have I think I will retire. A great instructable, here in the UK trying to just get Muriatic acid is almost impossible unlike the USA where you can get it from just about any hardware store.

Reply 3 years ago. I got a question. I have been refining gold pins with nitric acid. The issue is this. When i melt it using the coffee filter the gold comes out white. But when i don't use the coffee filter the gold doesn't loose its golden color. What is happening? Reply 7 years ago on Introduction. Here in Canada it isn't that easy ether, some things require you to pass a university course in order to get the licence so you can buy the chemicals.

Because of my work I have 5. Reply 6 years ago on Introduction. Maybe you live in the Far North, because I live in Canada and any hardware store sells muriatic acid, including Canadian Tire.

Please accept my apologies for taking so long to reply to your comments on my Instructable Gold Recovery. Go to your settings and change comment and message notification settings to once an hour instead of as they are made. It is a glitch. Great 'ible btw. Here in Canada the Muriatic acid isn't bad try buying fertilizer I sharecropped urea is a fertilizer.