Dismantling Computers (and Phones) for their GOLD! Part II

Greetings, STEMgeeks! Today I took apart the remaining Dell computer towers I had (if you missed my previous post, you should check it out!). Nothing new to report but then I moved on to something entirely different.

An Apple computer tower! I've had this one for longer than I had the other 9 towers but just never got around to dismantling it. I wonder... Is it any different inside?

After opening a slightly different locking mechanism, my question is answered: very different!

This one has 6 RAMs(?).

It is equipped with 2 fans.

Then I found an additional fan and a speaker!

My dad will love the little speaker, along with the fans. I'll save them for him. There was an additional speaker connected to a grill but it was inaccessible so I had to leave it. How unfortunate.

There was this large chip connected perpendicular to the motherboard, which I don't even have a name for. The last Dell had one of these too. They have gold plating so they are keepers. Now it's time to tackle the G5 section.

After prying off the cover, it revealed not 1 but 2 "radiators". These were tricky to remove because they require an Allen wrench. Luckily I found the right one near the kitchen sink, still there from our last plumbing job. The first screw was easy to remove but the second was all tucked away and I had to grab the Allen wrench with some pliers.

Nothing to note on the bottom of the chip connected to the "radiator". Let's remove those screws and see what's going on on the other side.

Nothing. Not even a microprocessor. Unless that's what that thing glued to the center is. But I don't see any gold or an easy way to remove that part. To save myself from more disappointment, I decided not to remove the other "radiator". I put everything back in its place (mostly) and added this tower to the scrap pile.

Since I was still in a scavenging mood, I decided to take apart some old smartphones that the same friend gave to me.

I started by removing the battery from this Nokia.

You can already see plenty of gold plating but, unfortunately, I don't have a torx set. I guess this phone will be put on hold (pun intended).
Next up:

Hopefully this LG phone was assembled with regular screws.

Luck is on my side. Now it's time to get rid of all the plastic and useless components.

Not bad for a newer phone. On to the next one.

This phone looks like it's seen some shit. Well, the screen isn't what I'm after anyway. No indium for me. Now let's fast forward and see what we got from this phone.

I'm disappointed in what this phone yielded, but at least it's something. Looks like my buddy left his micro SD card in it. He's probably not going to miss it.

Well that's all for today's scavenging adventure. Next time we'll be dismantling some iPhones! It might be tricky though.
Stay tuned!