comparative motherbaord valuation

the ongoing 'discussion' about the valuation of a motherboard.

i am going to offer a solution that will end that discussion.

this something that any member or guest will be able to do for themselves. no need to determine if one opinion or link is viable or correct.

you will need a pair of pliers and a 6" or longer flat blade screw driver. for the older sight impaired folks, like myself, i would suggest a strong light and a magnifying glass.

i used a the following motherboards, but this will work with any 2 different motherboards.

early version p-1
a p-3 slot
a purple chinese 478
a lpga socket t commonly called a socket 775

remove the plastic retaining guides from the memory, pci, cpu sockets. ( pliers and screw driver) some of the guides will have crystallized due to age and heat. no problem. we are only trying to expose a few pins from each socket. no need to remove the all of the plastic.



i normally lay the pliers flat and use it as a fulcrum to pry off the guide with the screw driver. some folks like to use the pliers and simply pull of the guide. the guides are not glued or sonic welded. they just seem like it.

DO NOT RUN THE SCREW DRIVER THRU YOUR HAND!!

this requires a combination of finesse and force.

a simple observation of the pins will reveal several things.

the coverage area of the pins and the color of the gold plating.

the newer the board the less coverage found on the pins.

the lighter color is indicative of a thinner plating that does not reflect light at the same wave length as the heavier plating. it is still pure gold. there is just less of it.

if you look at the pins on the chinese boards, you will note that the pins are only covered at the arc of the pin. that is the expanded part, rounded part, of the pin that makes contact. a close examination shows that the arc is not fully covered on the back or opposing sides of the pin. the color reflection seems to show that the gold has been flashed rather than plated.

while these are not regulated terms requiring a set minimum thickness, such as a karat hall mark, it does mean that there is far less plated material present. it is especially true considering these boards were manufactured in the asian market.

86 and p-1 boards have larger pins with more full coverage pins. the slot board has smaller, thinner pins with fewer full coverage pins. the 775 and chinese board have almost no coverage on any part of the pin besides the mating point of the pin.

if you look at the progression of less plating and thinner plating on each generation of motherboard, you can see how the newer boards have less value than the older generations of boards.

while there are some variations, particularly with slot and 775 boards, it is clear that there is less gold per board in and on today's motherboards than the older generation of boards.

as an example

take a stack of business cards and stack them up 1" high. we will give that a value of 1/10 gram of full coverage pins.

when we use pins that are only half plated we must now stack those cards 2" high to get that same 1/10 gram value.

no that is not absolutely mathematically correct but it does show how easily a board can lose value. and how value can be lost.

the lack of plating quality in the newer boards does seem to offer an explanation for the high motherboard failure rate of the past few years. dell & compaq replaced a lot of 478 motherboards. wonder why.

now for the debate. it should be obvious that a board that contains less gold is going to recover less gold. meaning the boards is worth less.

as the ratio of lower grade boards on the market continues to increase, i predict the prices of those boards will fall. resulting in a multiple grading and pricing system.

2 years ago it was common to find gaylords of old 86, p-1 and p-2 motherboards. those volumes have been steadily dropping. they have been replaced with slot, p-4 and 775 boards.

it is inevitable that pricing will change. the only real question is when it will become a standard pricing.

Sounds like a trip to your house is in order

Originally Posted by ComputerScrapper

I have maintained that I can usually get in a load of 10 486 series towers and at least 7 of them will still work...Get 10 Pentium 4 towers in and I am lucky if 2 or 3 of them still work.

that is really a good rate for p-4's. we get a lot of 775's and i doubt if we get 1 in 20 that have a working motherboard. the cpu's are all good, but the board is fried. i can't remember the last 478's we had that were any good.

to be honest, i had never checked into any of these boards. i have been going off settlement returns. now that i have dismantled a few of these boards, it is rather obvious what the problems are.

i would agree that most of the 86 computers will still work. i found a quite a few of the old p-1 and pentium pros still work as well. i just don't get many any more.

Thanks for the info. I find it interesting to look at a 10 or 20 year gold chart and see where the gold price was when the different CPUs/boards were in production. Lower price = heavier plate.