Clean Circuitboards

Value

Circuitboards, including motherboards, cards, memory boards (SIMMs, DIMMs, Cache, etc), hard drive and other controller boards, are one of the most valuable recycling material FreeGeek deals with. The more we can categorize them (dependent on space and time), the more money we can get from them. For example:

The gaylord of motherboards + cards + other goes for around 85c/lb. The gaylord of hard drive controller boards goes for around 1.25/lb.

The price is dependent on how much gold the material has, but is not dependent on the specific box, so a processor left in the motherboards bin gets us nothing.

Please note that we may be able to get more for memory cards because of the gold fingers and their densities than they currently get in the motherboards bin. Also note that cdrom controller cards could probably go in the hard drive controller bin, but the work of extracting them is likely too much. Floppy drive controller boards, however, are likely better off in motherboards.

Also note that no one has explored whether daughterboards would get a different price from motherboards.

Clean for safety and processing

Lastly, for clean circuitboard bins to make everyone happiest, the following things need to not be in them:

• batteries. All batteries, like Dallas type clock, NiCd barrel batteries, alkaline, and button type, have to get removed.
• processors. All have to get removed, including 386 and 486 procs.
• memory modules. Remove all memory sticks off the boards.
• heatsinks. Remove them, including the smaller heatsinks on chips.
• physically large capacitors, or transformers. These boards go in with powersupplies unless the components come off. The transformers are copper around ferrous, and we don't know what to do with them better than motors, though we should explore it.
• Steel faceplates.