How Much Gold is in an Integrated Circuit Chip

If there is one thing new scrappers to the hobby get excited about, its the claims of gold mining that ewaste. YouTube videos and news articles tempt people into believing that wealth beyond their dreams is but a circuit board away. But is this a fool’s errant? Lets discuss how much gold is in an Integrated Circuit Chip.

Spoiler alert – There is very little money to be made if you try to get the gold in computer chips and other electronic parts yourself, unless you have a lot of material that can be recycled, and by a lot we really mean a lot. Most of the time, it’s not worth extracting gold from CPUs and other electronics unless you do it professionally in a lot of large batches. When you only process a few items, the cost is often more than the value that you get back in gold. More importantly, the process of refining gold involves working with dangerous materials like nitric and hydrochloric acids, as well as by-products like Mercury, and should only be done by people who know how to do it safely. Don’t be tempted by those Youtubers smelting away in their backyards.

So how do you get that gold?

The beast way is to find a local dealer or refiner. They can be hard to find with some countries being very poorly served. The UK, for example, has no real circuit board recycling service and precious few refiners. Whilst the USA has BoardSort.com. Australia has E-waste-Ben!!!

A professional precious metal recycler / refiner can take your electronic scrap (eScrap) items and safely and quickly remove the scrap gold and silver from them. These items include CPUs, transistors, RAM memory sticks, motherboards and other printed circuit boards, fingers, connectors, pins and other parts. In return, the customer will usually get paid between 40% and 60% of the value of the gold after it has been refined. Some precious metal recyclers may have a minimum weight requirement for the scrap material you send them. For example, depending on the type of material you send them, some recyclers may require you to send them 2 lbs or more to work with.

A lot of computer chips made after 1998, don’t have much gold in them because they don’t use solid gold wire bonds or gold-plated lids in their packaging. For scrap gold refining, these processors usually have the least amount of gold in them of all the processor types.

As an example, the Intel Pentium 4 Microprocessor came in an organic (non-ceramic) package that was not made of ceramic. It had a nickle-plated copper lid and did not use gold wire to connect the silicon chip to its package. It only had a small amount of gold because its connector pins on the bottom were gold-plated over a nickel layer. However, the pins were only gold-plated to a thickness of 0.2 µm, which isn’t very thick at all. Gold-plated pins on CPUs usually yield about 1 gramme of pure gold for every 500 grammes of pins. And trust me, 500g of pins will take you a long time to accumulate.

Why use Ceramic?

Ceramic is used to protect integrated circuits for a number of reasons. First, ceramic can protect delicate circuitry from damage caused by shocks, dust, and oxidation, as well as oil from fingerprints that gets on the surface. Ceramic, on the other hand, is a good material for protecting microchips and micro circuit boards because it doesn’t let electricity pass through it.

So, Why use gold?

Gold is a great and very efficient conductor. It also doesn’t get rusty. This makes it more durable, which increases the shelf life of the things it is used on. Also, gold will not rust. Gold is also very malleable and ductile, which makes it a good choice for the wiring inside the CPU.

The gold is also very good at sticking to the things that it is put on, and isn’t likely to fall off or chip.

It also moves energy a lot faster than other metals and materials, which is why it’s so important.

Conclusion – Is it Worth it?

Some people say that getting gold from a processor or computer is a good way to make money. The truth is that if you only have one processor or a few, you won’t make much money. If you are a microscrappers or hobbyist then think of other ways to make money because if you don’t have volume you wont make the money in precious metals like golds and palladium for example. The fact is the answer to the question how much gold is in an integrated circuit chip is not much at all.

Also if you are the environmentally friendly type of scrapper, then all those acids will make your blood boil. Just don’t do it. Lobby your local government representative to invest in e-waste recycling.

It’s possible to get about 1/5th of a gramme of gold from the inside of a computer that isn’t very powerful.