Board Value Reference
Twelve PCB board classes OSCAR recognises — desktop, laptop, server, GPU, phone PCB, RAM, NIC, HDD/SSD, audio, PSU, capacitor bank, smart card. Each row shows the typical Au / Ag / Pt / Pd grams per kilogram and a live £/kg value band ( live prices). Cross-references into the Component Guide explain where each metal comes from.
| Board class | AUGold | AGSilver | PTPlatinum | PDPalladium | £/kg value band | Linked guides |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Desktop Motherboard Standard ATX/mATX consumer desktop board. Gold sits on edge fingers, CPU socket pins, and PCI slot contacts; silver in solder and through-ho… | AU0.85 g/kg | AG4.20 g/kg | PT0.10 g/kg | PD0.15 g/kg | £64.27/kgtypical low £38.25/kg · high £90.24/kg | |
Laptop Motherboard Compact laptop/mobile mainboard. Less gold per kg than desktop boards because edge fingers are shorter and BGA pins are tighter. Higher silv… | AU0.45 g/kg | AG2.80 g/kg | PT0.05 g/kg | PD0.08 g/kg | £34.46/kgtypical low £17.70/kg · high £51.44/kg | |
Server Board Server/workstation board. Heavy gold on multiple DIMM sockets, CPU sockets (often multi-socket), and dense PCI/PCIe slot rows. Silver and Pd… | AU1.20 g/kg | AG6.50 g/kg | PT0.20 g/kg | PD0.25 g/kg | £93.80/kgtypical low £64.45/kg · high £123.15/kg | |
Graphics Card Discrete GPU card. Strong Au on the GPU substrate pad and PCIe edge gold-fingers; Ag-rich solder on the BGA array; Pd in MLCC terminations. … | AU0.60 g/kg | AG3.10 g/kg | PT0.08 g/kg | PD0.12 g/kg | £46.11/kgtypical low £23.58/kg · high £68.91/kg | |
Phone PCB Mobile phone mainboard. Tiny PCBs with thin Au plating and dense Ag solder; traces and pads dominate the metal weight. Bulk-process rather t… | AU0.15 g/kg | AG1.20 g/kg | PT0.02 g/kg | PD0.04 g/kg | £12.17/kgtypical low £6.18/kg · high £19.10/kg | |
RAM Stick DIMM/SODIMM memory module. DRAM modules carry Au edge fingers and Ag-rich solder across the BGA flash array. Older DDR1/DDR2 grade higher th… | AU0.05 g/kg | AG0.40 g/kg | PT0.01 g/kg | PD0.05 g/kg | £5.15/kgtypical low £2.61/kg · high £7.73/kg | |
NIC Network interface card. Au on the edge fingers, Ag on transformer shields and BGA ICs, Pd-bearing crystal oscillators common. Often a small … | AU0.15 g/kg | AG0.80 g/kg | PT0.02 g/kg | PD0.06 g/kg | £12.38/kgtypical low £6.26/kg · high £18.56/kg | |
HDD/SSD Controller HDD controller PCB or SSD adapter. Small board with a single Au-plated SATA/IDE edge finger row; Ag-rich solder on the controller and NAND B… | AU0.10 g/kg | AG0.60 g/kg | PT0.01 g/kg | PD0.04 g/kg | £8.22/kgtypical low £4.16/kg · high £12.33/kg | |
Audio Card Sound card or audio interface. Au on the edge fingers, Ag-rich contact pastes in relays and potentiometers, some Pd in resonance components.… | AU0.10 g/kg | AG0.70 g/kg | PT0.02 g/kg | PD0.05 g/kg | £8.84/kgtypical low £4.48/kg · high £13.26/kg | |
PSU Power supply unit PCB. Mostly through-hole components — TO-220 regulators, transformers, filter caps. Metal value is low; bulk-process as pa… | AU0.05 g/kg | AG0.30 g/kg | PT0.01 g/kg | PD0.03 g/kg | £4.52/kgtypical low £2.28/kg · high £6.77/kg | |
Capacitor Bank Bulk capacitor cluster or capacitor-rich HV board. Pd-bearing electrodes inside MLCC ceramics and tantalum caps; Ag in capacitor termination… | AU0.04 g/kg | AG0.20 g/kg | PT0.02 g/kg | PD0.08 g/kg | £5.43/kgtypical low £2.73/kg · high £8.15/kg | |
Smart Card Smart card reader board or chip-and-PIN module. Au on the contact pad array, Ag in connector contacts, small Pt/Pd in the security chip. Oft… | AU0.20 g/kg | AG1.50 g/kg | PT0.03 g/kg | PD0.05 g/kg | £16.13/kgtypical low £8.19/kg · high £24.20/kg |
Prices as of · live snapshot from the same seed as /prices. Yield ranges per board class derived from Boardsort community averages and UK merchant scrape-yard reports (see methodology below).
Total 12 board classes. Typical yield per kg is the centre of the band — low / typical / high factor multipliers per metal are tuned from per-lot spread (older, dense lots at the high end; newer consumer boards at the low end).
Methodology
How the numbers are derived
The typical-yield grams per kilogram come from the Boardsort community average for each board class — a long-running UK / US scrap-yard catalog updated by merchant feedback over many years. PGM (Pt / Pd) yields are corroborated against USGS platinum-group-metals refining literature and the UNEP / PMC critical-metals Stocks & Flows reports (Pt / Pd concentrations on PCBs are reported in the low-ppm range consistent with our typical yield).
The low / typical / high band stretches each per-metal yield by a factor that reflects per-lot spread — older industrial boards or server pulls sit at the high end; newer consumer PCBs and stripped scrap at the low end. Band is computed live via calculateEstimatedValue(grams, prices) so a spot-price change deterministically scales every row.
Caveats: Indicative reference rates, not a buyer’s quote. Real per-lot recovery depends on board age, plating thickness, component density, lot purity, and your yard. Always sample-test before committing. Use /analyze to estimate individual-board recovery against the same live snapshot — or run /guide to learn which components carry each metal.
- Boardsort yield catalogs — per-class Au / Ag gram ranges for desktop, laptop, server, GPU, phone, RAM, NIC, and miscellaneous PCB populations.
- USGS Platinum-Group Metals — annual statistics & information on Pt / Pd supply, refining yields, and end-use demand.
- UNEP / PMC Critical Metals — reporting on PGM Stocks & Flows, secondary recovery rates, and e-waste refining pathways.
Weekly Digest
Get the weekly UK scrap-metals price digest — Monday mornings, all nine metals.