How much gold is in the CPU?

Gold is a high value, but exactly how much gold is in the CPU?

You may not know it, but in electronic devices, typically your PC, there is gold inside. In fact, electronics is one of the biggest consumers of gold. And if you consume so much, how much gold does your PC end up with? Take it out and sell it, can you become a billionaire? In this article, we invite you to find out with us.

PC components contain gold

Virtually every computer and electronic device contains rare metals, including gold. It usually appears on printed circuit boards (PCBs), microprocessors, and some other components. Some electronic devices even have quite a bit of gold in them. If only talking about gold, here are some typical PC components that contain gold:

Motherboards in particular and motherboards in general: Usually this will be the place that contains the most gold in the PC. The edge of most components on the board will have gold contacts and connectors. In addition, you will also see a thin layer of gold on the surface of the motherboard.

Often CPUs will have hundreds of gold-plated pins on the edge and bottom.

RAM: Their pin pins are usually gold plated, look at it and you’ll see it right away. In addition, on the surface of the PCB there will usually be a thin layer of gold as well.

Of course, in addition to gold, these components also contain other metals such as Silver, Platinum, Palladium, Copper, Nickel, Aluminum, Tin, Zinc, and so on. But in the framework of this article, I will only focus on gold.

Because gold has very special properties, it is used a lot in PC components

Many of you must also wonder why gold is of high value, why do people bring it to make electronic components like that. The reason gold is used a lot in this case is because it has quite interesting and useful properties, eating other metals. Solid-state electronic devices typically use very low voltages and amperages. As a result, they can be easily affected by corrosion and tarnishing at the points of contact.

To overcome this problem, gold would be an extremely good candidate because it conducts electricity very well, has the ability to transmit small currents and is very less susceptible to corrosion. For this reason, the contacts, relays, wires, etc. are usually made of gold or gold plated, making it more durable and the signal more stable.

So how much gold is in the PC in the end?

Surely at this point, many of you will wonder if extracting gold and some precious metals from CPUs and other components will make it rich? And the short answer is no.

Some articles claim that an entire old PC can hold up to $9 worth of gold, but that’s not minus the cost to extract it. Some other sources estimate that the average PC will now contain 0.2 grams of gold (worth about 12 USD). And laptops are usually only half that.

Depending on the item, it will have a different amount of gold. For example, old CPUs like Intel Pentium Pro ceramic version contain up to 0.43 grams of gold, Intel Pentium gold lid version contains up to 0.48 grams of gold, or even more surprising, there is Intel Pentium Pro version. plastic but contains 0.55 grams of gold.

Old CPUs usually have more gold than newer CPUs

Computer chips manufactured after 1998 usually have very little gold content, because most of these CPUs no longer use the bonding technology of solid gold wires or gold-plated caps as in the past. Today, CPUs, especially Intel CPUs and soon AMD Ryzen Zen 4 CPUs, often no longer use pin pins, but instead, it only has contacts that are plated with a thin layer of gold to contact. with socket on the motherboard. Even some CPUs on laptops and smartphones have no connection points; These types will use “solder bump” to solder and connect to the motherboard.

Taking gold from computer components is less beneficial but more harmful

In short, although there is gold in your PC, the content is very small, plus the separation process is complicated, so please refer to it mainly. If you only process a few chips, sometimes the cost of the stages is more expensive than the amount of gold you get. So selling the whole CPU with a few components can be much more profitable.

A little more specifically, the refining of gold and other rare metals such as Silver, Platinum, Palladium from CPUs and electronic components is usually only profitable if there are professional tools and a lot of components. In addition, gold refining is very dangerous due to exposure to harmful chemicals such as mercury, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. So it’s best to just let the experts do it.

Hope the above information will help you discover new things about the world of technology. If you have any suggestions or additions, please share them with us in the comments section below. Thank you for your interest in this article.

According to GVN360

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