Magann: A PC circuit board, where the gold is, weighs about a pound. If you had a ton of those boards, you should have 5 troy ounces of gold.
Circuits in modern CPUs and Laptops weigh around 100 gm so you can expect to extract 0.150 grams of Gold.
Gold is found in numerous places on a motherboard: IDE connectors, PCI Express slot, PCI, AGP, ISA, and other ports, jumper pins, the processor socket, and DIMM (SIMM on older motherboards) slots. All of these connectors are often covered with a fine layer of gold a few microns thick, deposited by flashing or plating.
While extracting gold from electronics is not without its challenges, it can be worth it for individuals looking to recover valuable metals and reduce e-waste. However, following safety precautions and using personal protective equipment when handling hazardous chemicals is essential.
Pour nitric acid into the glass container over the circuit boards. Stir the mixture with the glass or metal rod until the contents become a uniform fluid. Once the gold has separated from the plates — it may take some time — strain the nitric acid from the mix using the filter. Take out the pieces that aren't melted.
CPUs have a high content of gold – it could be as much as 0.2 g to 0.5 g! Melting and processing of parts from several devices yield up to 1–2 g of gold.
Computer CPU's (processors) have the most precious metal value by weight, followed by Memory (RAM) & Circuit Board Fingers / Connectors / Pins, then Circuit Boards (Motherboards), then cables / wires, with hard drives & whole computers being last.
Magann: A PC circuit board, where the gold is, weighs about a pound. If you had a ton of those boards, you should have 5 troy ounces of gold.
Panning works best when gold is coarse and well liberated. Under right conditions, panning can produce high grade concentrates or even liberated gold. Then miners can employ gold recover methods such as direct smelting (described below), although many panning operations lead to directly recoverable gold.
How much gold is in old computers? It is estimated that most computers contain one third of a gram of gold. They can be used in different parts, such as on motherboards, PCI boards, internal modems, circuit boards, and old computer processors.
Random Access Memory Chips (RAM) - A part of the circuit board, these little gold mines are installed to increase the operational memory of your computer. They often contain a small but a significant amount of gold-plated pins, and a thin layer of gold on their surfaces.
Among all home devices, computers and televisions typically contain the most gold. Gold is also found in the circuit boards of earlier generations of cameras, radios, and media players. Traces of gold can be found in other electronics like game consoles, tablets, and phones.
Strip out the boards
In another container, mix two parts hydrochloric acid and one part weak hydrogen peroxide (a concentration of three per cent). Pour this mixture over the circuit boards so they are completely submerged. Wait for a week, giving the vessel a stir every day with a glass or plastic rod.
TVs usually contain a very small amount of gold that might amount to about $1.00 or less in value. It can be quite a lot of work to get to the gold inside your TV as well.
The processors and connectors in computers, tablets, and smartphones use gold. You can also find gold in televisions, gaming consoles, printers, or essentially anything electronic.
All hard drives contain precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and Palladium. While they contain precious metals in very little amount, they still have a value.
“A ton of electronics scrap should contain about 12 ounces of gold . . .”
Gold is an important element in the design of printed circuit boards, and looking closely at most PCBs will reveal that the 'fingers' on the board include metal contacts fabricated from gold.
Gold in iPhones
A typical iPhone is estimated to house around 0.034g of gold, 0.34g of silver, 0.015g of palladium and less than one-thousandth of a gram of platinum. It also contains the less valuable but still significant aluminum (25g) and copper (around 15g).
To extract gold from electronics at home, get yourself a device that can separate the pure gold wire. The easiest way to do it is by using a centrifuge machine. It separates all types of materials via different densities and weights at high speed with a low damage rate on each material.