1000 RAM Stick Gold Recovery Challenge 

Yes. Didnt want to use chemicals and make chemical waste. That's a great method thanks!

White Distilled Vinegar and Hydrogen Peroxide will get rid of the copper. Use an aquarium airpump and some hose to agitate it. Plus when you are done recovering gold, add some aluminum from a Coke can and it will drop the copper out of solution.

Thanks a lot for this video. If this works out well, I will definitely try this myself. Can't wait to see the next vid.

I'm glad you shared this, this inspired me to make a ball mill to grind the foils to dust and separate the gold by specific gravity.

where do you get all those ram sticks

I remove my fingers over a sturdy thick piece of white paper, folded 2 ways to make creases. This allows me to pour the foils into my collection jar easily. 60w soldering kicks but over my old 30watt model!

Excellent idea for an experiment. I have refined with chemicals and I can tell you that if the gold was removed the way you are dong it and melted into a bead that the chemistry is much easier to handle. For the people that say it is a waste of time remind them how long they spend rinsing the gold foils off of each piece of pcb. Been there done that it looks like it doesnt take any longer the way you are doing it. And by the way it takes about a week to separate the gold foils from the circuit boards doing the common process of hcl and a long time rinsing depending on how many boards are being done. I really like what you are doing here. Im very interested in what results you get. Please keep me updated

Hey Ben, Well done! this and all your videos. Thanks for putting them together. Perfect timing, I was just shopping around for a shear to take off the fingers..... I tested this last night on Ethernet and sound cards also and it works great. added in using a steel ruler to straight edge a cut with a utility knife along the top edge of the fingers to aid in the removal.

This video convinced me not to trash my old ram sticks.

Very nice video Ben, I'd consider doing the same as well, getting a soldering iron and getting the gold fingers off RAM sticks and so on. I don't really get a lot of them at the moment, if I do get heaps of them, I'd seriously look into it. Keep up the good work Benny!👍

Just use tin snips and cut a strip containing the gold pins then put them into a hydrochloric acid (27% or so) + 3% hydrogen peroxide to remove the pins. Super cheap and dissolves the copper under the gold fingers. It's also possible to put the whole ram sticks into an oven (Outdoor) and set it to 190c or so (Some sticks took 210c) . This melts the solder. I then used pliers to grab sticks and flick them on to a table stop. This usually knocks all of the memory modules and diodes (I guess they are...) free from the sticks. Also works with motherboards.

I’ll admit I’m a dentist and I won’t quit my day job, but somehow I got into scrapping as a side hobby and I love learning from your videos. Maybe it started out collecting scrap dental gold and crowns, which I send to a refiner and I get back cash or bullion. I’ll have to try this and send it to the refiner, with gold plated pins. They assay everything and give me value of the Au, Pt, Pd, Ag. I don’t want to send a bunch of waste and this seems like a simple, clean, chemical-free way of doing this. The porcelain fused to metal and cast gold dental crowns always have waste and impurities anyways that they deal with and melt it all down in a furnace. The porcelain crowns usually have a white gold which appears silver because of Pd, Ag, Pt, but it can be 40% gold sometimes, or worthless Ni-Co base metal alloys, again, I leave that to the refiners to assay. I have 2 years of undergrad chemistry, but I don’t have the money, time, equipment and space to refine my own scrap. I am experimenting with nitric acid and silver contacts though, we’ll see if I can get anything. Thanks Ben!!

Hi Ben. Another awesome video. I melt my gold with a map gas and oxygen torch. Small gold like that would melt in less than 5 minutes and the torch only cost around 30 US dollars. You can buy canisters of oxygen and map gas when it runs out but it last a while doing small amounts of gold. Just make sure you use some borax to melt with the gold it makes a glassy layer that covers the gold and it cracks off or melts off with water. Also small gold like that can blow out of the crucible so put a quarter inch or so over the gold so if anything blows out it is borax. You could start with a couple of ram sticks worth of gold to start and then increase as you get good at it. You could get all this stuff for 50 US dollars or so and then you could challenge yourself to make the biggest blob of gold in a day and then weigh it right on the spot. You can get the torch at a hardware store with extra canisters, the crucible on Ebay and the borax at a grocery store sold as detergent. Make sure you are wearing gloves and goggles and do it in a well ventilated place.

Nice! Correct not everyone want to use chemicals nor want to chance using it. Awesome vid!

If anything.. them Aussies know their gold! Great vid!

I salute you on this idea as it was in my mind couple of days ago 👏

I do what you do & use an iron to liberate the gold in my circuits. Cleaner & less dangerous than chemicals.

Good lord that many ram sticks can run a human brain

Hey..i can't wait to see the results Ben. real cool.

be interesting to see the results ben. tony

Hi Ben, Ive already started processing rams the same way after I saw another video on here doing the same thing. You'll get approx 1 gram for every 6 double sided sticks. Accounting for minor losses (sometimes those gold fingers ping in every direction!!) you should have about 165 grams from 1000 sticks. A kilo of gold fingers therefore would take approx 6000 sticks. Bet you've got that much stockpiled:-) Though I like that you dont need expensive chemicals as this is very quick I'm still going to chemical process further as 8-14k gold is worth a pittance in UK compared to 24k. I look forward to seeing what you get for the gold from your buyer,

Thank you for all the quality videos. I'm doing some recycling myself, but I mainly going for the precious metals. one thing I would like to know more about is all the platinum and palladium that deferent sources on Internet says are plated on connectors and the pcb. Do you know anything about that? I have read that some pcb can be plated all over or on spots just like gold plating/flashing. Thanks again for quality information :)

Isn't this like a thousand times faster than using chemicals?

Why would you do this to me!? Now I'm eagerly anticipating the next vid and can't sleep! LoL cool beans Ben :)

I rather do that than working in Wendy. Working hours for less than 1000. I could do that happily. Awesome job dude. Thanks for this video.

I just figured this way out and found your video when I was looking to see if it will work. No shame and not using chemicals! I can't really explain why either but I like not using chemicals.

where did you get all these rams????

Ive heard fake gold is magnetic why is my golden ram fingers magnetic

Best proces ever bro you are golden heheh thanks for tip

cant wait for the next one !!!

If I was living in ur country i will take on of them and put the ram on my computer after my pc make gaming 😁😂😂

might i suggest a piece of parchment paper underneath the ram it will catch the fingers

When you wrote in the title 1000 Ram i was expecting 1000 MB, not 1000 RAM STICKS!

5:50 You could do that (removing foils) in a cookie pan (nice low sides), and catch all the foils.

neat amd easy. i like it. thanks for the video.

Wow this is cool I bin trying to figure out a way to get mine off with out knowing chemistry lol

Love what you're doing mate, this is brilliant! What other stuff can you do with your soldering iron technique? Can you do it on cellphone circuit boards?

I would be very interested in finding out how much gold you got off all the chips in the ram. Please do a video about refining the ram chips.

I am So happy to see that there is another way, I have been wanting to do this for some time, but the use of the chemicals has been very offputting, this looks like a wee bit of a messier way of doing it but healthier none the less, Thank you so much for your videos, I have learnt so much from them as i knew very little when i started scrapping full time a year ago.

ai only do it ta help with me ptsd, thanks fer showin me this way,,100 thumbs up

This is nice , probably cheaper, great

wow..nice bro..

wow.. greate idea sir love your video i think you have now a lots of accumulated YELLOW.. THE GOLD..

Nice experiment. Now we all know. Thanks

I have a very bad message for you: this gold foils would not melt until you process it with AR. I tried this and let it up to 1150 degrees of Celsius for 30 minutes, nothing happen. It won't get into one solid piece of gold-copper mixture. I've lost a lot of gold by heating, instead.

round 5:40 you say this is for fun i agree i view it as a hobby that pays

a good method! thank you

JIG, fire-proof brick/slate over a collection tray; paintbrush => FAST efficient gold removal

Hey I'll buy those sticks without fingers if we can get a good deal on shipping

Another great video.

Very smart fella cause thats a really cool way to do it.

I like how you did that.

is there a easy way to get the gold offen pin's ! like to know about this video's thank without the chemicals ?

Not knocking your setup.. looks like you got it pretty well down pat. That being said, you should try putting some sturdy wire mesh cloth over top of your catch bowl.. setting the sticks on that, then remove the gold fingers. Looks like that might save you a fair amount of time catching up all those little buggers.

A lot faster than soaking them in salt&vinegar

you should make a video about gold recovery from 1000 cell phones

Well i'm very surprised the fingers come off so easily with this method. And it sure would be easy to refine it to pure with acid still.

got any 4gig sticks! i need memory! lol grief you make it look very fast! a q, is your iron temp controlled? if so what temp you using on this?

Thanks for sharing Ben

Awesome idea 👍

hey dude can i have some ram sticks hahaha

I would try this but coming up with 71 pounds of RAM is a bit tricky . I have 3 lbs at the moment.

Learned something new

there are copper under the gold how did you remove copper from gold

when are you going to put up part 2 really like to no what happens :)

can i get 3 or 4 1gb ddr rams?

When are you going to do this again

Good on you, can't wait to see how you do! Done yet?

You could sell these DDR2 and DDR3 and DDR4 Rams

Hi.. I used that soldering way.. But it's not removed... Have u put something on fingers to help it to removed easily?...

hello. does the ironsolder work in the sim card too?

Hey, Ben, if you don't mind me asking, is scrapping how you make a living?

Good evening, my friend, what's the deal with your soldering iron?

Good evening my friend, this is a soldering iron.

For this process can be a 50w soldering iron

So what do you do with the rest of the ram chips

finally... how much gold(in grams) did he take from 1000rams?

Fun but money too.gold is worth a lot. And it all helps. 2024 with a loaf of bread at 4.00

6:38 at this point, I'm convinced people don't know basic chemistry. Most things on every are made of _chemicals_, which all have _atoms_.(got that wrong the first time ;3;) Water, as you may have heard, is hydrogen and oxygen, and you breath in oxygen, a little bit of carbon dioxide and lots (70% of what you breath) nitrogen. You may say just dangerous chemicals, but as long as you are careful, honestly, it's worth your time. It's takes, maybe, 15 minutes to find out what chemicals you need and how much, and it's a lot faster than scrapping the gold off. Btw, I'm not having a go at you, just informing you that chemicals are that bad.

its easy to use muraitic acid and peroxide

Hey Ben, can you scrap MLCC's just to see what a 1000 ram will come up with.

you need a manager, good voice, enthusiasm, and video, long tedious process cheers.

You could sell these DDR2 and DDR3 Rams in Iran much higher than the worth of little gold on them.

Oh my God this takes a lot of time to take out thous contact pins in this way :S

Hello, 1 kg ddr ram gives 65 gr fingers and 375 gr IC chips. Does anybody refine them? how much gold ?

1000 kg mix cpu how much gold recover / grams

Have you considered heating them in the oven to have you considered heating them in the oven to about 400 Degrees Fahrenheit and holding them somewhere close to that because though I haven't done that I do know that's below the melting point of solder but would have your fingers ready to fall off with much effort far less than what I'm seeing you do now and just seems to me it might be worth trying because there's an old electronics technician trick that consists of placing entire boards in need of repair in the oven to Reflow the solder without having to do anything else so easy a blind man can do it because it's all about knowing precisely where your solder will flow and then dancing along that edge the other methods not to mention the physical stresses put on components regardless of temperature that can all be avoided if done properly and I have seen it done many times my other electronics gurus I know who effectively minimize risk and effort while maximizing productivity because you can put quite a few motherboards inside of a typical household oven which is where at least three people I know do all of their work rather than high-rent storefront that just chews up all the profits.

it is fun, cool hobby and can make some money

Great idea. I'd set me up some kind of jig so I could swipe them like a card reader -maybe it'd work... :)

Acid it's work

Hello, I am French and I love your videos. Go get yourself a video showed us how to extract gold? Good luck thank you

Which devise you used

Then tell me ofter removing how to clean it

hi ben, me again lol i think i have commented on every video you have done. just a quick question, when you have the foils of the ram stick would they still need the acid to strip any other metals? or are they ready for smelting?

its 100% gold

awesome

How many GB is each stick?

Hey Ben, I recently cut off tons of gold fingers from old circuits and my question is, surely a lot of those are not broken right? (I dont know where you got them so all 1000 may indeed be broke) though my thought process would be, wouldn't it be a million times more worth it to test the ram sticks and sell them as is on eBay? So, the process of scrapping these ram sticks for gold recovery is ONLY worth it (money wise) if the ram sticks dont work correct? I mean, you wouldn't consider scrapping WORKING ram sticks for gold right?

No. That's what 999 ram sticks and one on the floor, looks like. :

It takes electricity to run a soldering iron,.What is the electricity cost on using it to remove the gold???