In Pictures: Tom's Hardware Recovers Gold And Silver From CPUs

[Yannick_G_THFR]

Processors are responsible for operating on all of your precious data. But did you know that they also are made up, in part, of precious metals? We're going to show you how to recover the gold and silver hidden away inside your old CPUs.

In Pictures: Tom's Hardware Recovers Gold And Silver From CPUs : Read more

 

[The Greater Good]

A lot of work for that little BB.

 

[jprahman]

It's kind of sad to see these processors get destroyed, I mean some of those are classics that would be cool to have as a keepsake.

 

[gmcizzle]

And here I thought high school chemistry was useless. Don't try this at home though...well unless you want to see how fast chlorine gas kills everything around you.

 

[alhanelem]

i have an old pentium MMX on display (in my room on a shelf where all my unused computer hardware goes)

 

[LuckyDucky7]

Woah! Better keep those AMD CPU's- those are ancient relics of when AMD used to actively compete with Intel!

 

[Tamz_msc]

I love these articles!

 

[slicedtoad]

huh, didnt know gold could become a compound.

 

[de5_Roy]

very nice article.

 

[soccerdocks]

High School Chemistry FTW!

 

[frostmachine]

Simple electrolysis can get it to even higher purity. 999 might be difficult but 916 n above should be easy. Good enough for a ring/pendant. Heck, with enough CPU u can even engraved "Intel Inside"

 

[nekoangel]

I knew a teacher that used to collect and strip as much stuff from components and then send it up to a company that recycles it and pays you a cut.

 

[QEFX]

Assuming you get free cpus and your time is free ... How much is the materials vs the silver/gold selling price? Not that I'd do it, but just curious.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

And how much is that gold BB worth?

 

[KonstantinDK]

Chlorine gas is WMD as long as I know. (first used in WW1) Shouldn't FBI be ll over your asses?
Every1 be careful, it may suffocate u.
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/chlorine/basics/facts.asp

 

[koogco]

Definatly do not try this at home without good knowledge of chemistry and proper ventilation!
For anyone who forgot, exotermic reactions means that things get very hot (as there is spare energy from the process)
And yes, chlorine it very toxic, not that it takes more than 10 secs to make with remidies found commonly in a danish home >.>

 

[olaf]

i think if u calculate the cost of chemicals + resulting gold piece < cost of the cpu's as relics.

 

[Guest]

I couldn't help but laugh so hard when I saw the final result. XD

 

[feeddagoat]

The BBC done this in nang goes the theory. They used mobile phones and ram too. How much did the silver and gold come to especially vs buying the chemicals to produce them. Surely copper would be worth something too atm, the amount of street lights that have had the wiring stripped from them just for the copper!

 

[nforce4max]

Careful about what you destroy as some are worth much more than their base metal content and are very rare. Boards however go for it as most eventually become non recoverable as far as working is concerned.

 

[nforce4max]

[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]And how much is that gold BB worth?[/citation]

About a dollar to maybe three at the most. It is not 24k quality and isn't worth much, wasting cpus on a small scale isn't worth the chemicals used to extract the base metals. Close to the size of one troy grain.

 

[CaedenV]

The funny thing is that there are kits on e-bay which claim to let you get hundreds of dollars from this kind of process lol. I guess they forget to mention the time involved as well as the cost of chemicles to do it right. Recyclers make their money by doing this in mass, as well as using electrolisis for parts of the process which is a little more effective. They also go for the copper and rare earth elements which are too hard to get at in a home style setup.

 

[masterasia]

Did anyone see the guy on Penn and Teller: Tell a Lie who was able to extract gold and other stuff from the streets of New York City? It's pretty amazing. He says he racked up about 5K worth of gold particles.

Now I'm afraid that my computer is going to get jacked just for the gold it holds in the CPU just like how people were getting their catalytic converters chopped off for the platinum.

 

[spookyman]

sounds like the costs of a equipment and chemicals would not merit such a project for a few CPU's

 

[clonazepam]

I want to know the value of the gold and silver versus the cost of all resources used to recover them!