What to do with boards that have gold plated pins and ic chips?

Pretty new to the electronic scrapping. picked up a couple of computers the other day and I know from watching videos on youtube that boards with gold plated pins and ic chips are worth more. I'm not going to get into refining pins but I read on scrapmetalforum.com that you should cut the pins off the board? Should I do that? If so where can i sell the pins? also what do I do with all the chips? Thanks alot guys. hope everybody has a safe and happy new year.

Actually if I were you and are serious about getting pins off computer boards, I would invest in a soldering pot so you don't bust a knuckle getting em out.

Well it just showed taking a pair of snips and clipping the pins right off.

you could do that but that also leaves material in the soldering hole. A little bit may not seem like alot at first but it ads up.

So that is the only way i could sell the pins if i got a soldering pot?

You'll do better hitting the archives here and reading a ton of old posts about this very subject. You tube can be informative, but also can be misleading or wrong.

In my operation, I don't take the pins off the boards because it devalues it according to my buyer. I do take off cpus, memory, other socketed ICs that aren't soldered to the board and save them up for sale later.

There are buyers in the buyer, seller section here that buy the boards whole, the chips separately, and the pins separately, so check their ads and email them for more info. You can clip pins with wire cutters if you want, but like logansryche said, you're leaving some of the pin behind when you do that.

I only remove items that will increase the value of the boards. When you start removing gold fingers, pins and IC chips you are decreasing the value of the boards.

Okay, so I should take off all of the chips on the boards but i shouldnt cut the pins off if im not going to refine the gold itself. Where do I sell Ic chips and whatnot then?

Buyer/Sellers area - there's lots of buyers in there that buy em.

Originally Posted by metz12

Okay, so I should take off all of the chips on the boards but i shouldnt cut the pins off if im not going to refine the gold itself. Where do I sell Ic chips and whatnot then?

When you start removing gold fingers, pins and IC chips you are decreasing the value of the boards.

Originally Posted by logansryche

Actually if I were you and are serious about getting pins off computer boards, I would invest in a soldering pot so you don't bust a knuckle getting em out.

Thanks. 'Soldering pot' is a new word for me, so I google it and find a nice youtube video etc about it.

OP, don't take items off boards you are selling, or can sell when you have enough of them.
But its good to be able to break down stuff thats not viable to sell.

But... its also not viable to extract Gold from electronic parts.....