Gold, silver, palladium: what is really in a circuit board?
A circuit board contains precious metals in small but highly concentrated amounts: according to a review published in RSC Advances (Rao et al., 2020), 10 to 1,600 g of gold, 200 to 20,000 g of silver and 5 to 970 g of palladium per tonne of boards. That is richer than a typical gold ore, yet it still amounts to a few tenths of a gram per kilo. These differences in content explain why, as at 15/11/2026, RECYNEW buys boards at between €0.68/kg and €26.00/kg depending on their category.
Which metals does a circuit board contain?
A board is an assembly of epoxy resin, glass fibre, ceramics and metals. According to Christian Thomas ("Le recyclage des cartes électroniques en France", Responsabilité & Environnement, Annales des Mines, no. 99, July 2020), metals make up 25% to 40% of the mass of boards, the main ones being copper, iron and aluminium.
Precious metals weigh far less but carry most of the value. Here are the published ranges:
| Metal | Content in boards | Comparison | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | 10 to 1,600 g/t | Typical gold ore: about 18 g/t | RSC Advances, 2020 |
| Silver | 200 to 20,000 g/t | Typical silver ore: about 85 g/t | RSC Advances, 2020 |
| Palladium | 5 to 970 g/t | Underground mines: 7 g/t at most | RSC Advances, 2020; Annales des Mines, 2020 |
| Tin | about 2% | Mines: about 1% | Annales des Mines, 2020 |
| Tantalum | 1,000 to 3,000 g/t (mobile devices) | Mines: 300 g/t | Annales des Mines, 2020 |
For an order of magnitude on a specific device, the same RSC Advances review states that one tonne of mobile phones contains on average 0.34 kg of gold, 3.5 kg of silver, 0.14 kg of palladium and 130 kg of copper.
Where are the gold, silver and palladium?
Precious metals are not spread evenly. They are concentrated wherever industry needs reliable conduction and good corrosion resistance:
- Gold coats contacts and connectors as a very thin plating, a few microns thick according to the Annales des Mines (2020). You can see it on rack card edge connectors, backplane connectors, plated tracks and processor pins, which RSC Advances (2020) cites as a studied source of gold.
- Palladium is used in particular in high-reliability multilayer ceramic capacitors for aerospace and defence, according to the BRGM palladium criticality sheet (version 2, November 2017).
- Silver is present in larger amounts than gold, but it is spread across components and is harder to spot with the naked eye.
- Copper forms the tracks and inner layers of the circuit. Solder is tin-based (Annales des Mines, 2020).
The practical consequence: what you can see (gold plating, chip density, connectors) is a good indicator of content. That is why buyback price lists grade boards by these visible signs.
How much precious metal is in a kilo of boards?
Let us convert the content into grams for one kilo of boards:
| Gold content | Gold in 1 kg of boards |
|---|---|
| 10 g/t (very low-grade board) | 0.01 g |
| 100 g/t | 0.1 g |
| 1,000 g/t | 1 g |
| 1,600 g/t (top of the range) | 1.6 g |
So even a high-grade board contains only about one gram of gold per kilo. The rest of its mass is resin, glass, copper and other base metals. These figures are published ranges: the actual content of a batch is only known after assay at the smelter.
Why is a high-grade board worth 38 times more than a low-grade one?
Because the gold content ratio between two boards can exceed 100 (from 10 to over 1,000 g/t). Buyback prices follow the same logic. As at 15/11/2026 (public price, base tier):
| Category | Buyback price |
|---|---|
| Hard drive motherboard | €26.00/kg |
| Old-generation mobile phone motherboard | €25.00/kg |
| Gold-plated circuit board | €15.90/kg |
| Circuit board with gold-plated tracks | €14.63/kg |
| Server motherboard | €7.28/kg |
| Mixed old motherboards | €4.50/kg |
| Mixed recent motherboards | €2.08/kg |
| Low-grade circuit board | €0.68/kg |
Between the hard drive motherboard and the low-grade board, the ratio is about 38. The full price list is on the circuit board prices per kilo page.
Loose components follow the same rule, with even higher contents: as at 15/11/2026, an Intel x86 ceramic processor is bought at €317.50/kg and gold memory at €40.00/kg, against €15.53/kg for silver memory. See the processors per kilo and RAM per kilo price lists.
Why are recent boards poorer?
Manufacturers cut the gold they use whenever its price rises. The World Gold Council (Gold Demand Trends, full year 2025) puts gold demand from electronics at 270.4 tonnes in 2025, flat year on year, and observes that printed circuit board manufacturers have accelerated thrifting and the search for substitute materials. RSC Advances (2020) also notes that the thickness of gold contacts roughly halved between devices from the 1980s and those from the 2000s.
The price list reflects this: as at 15/11/2026, mixed old motherboards are bought at €4.50/kg, more than twice the price of mixed recent motherboards (€2.08/kg).
Why do you not receive the raw value of the metal?
The metal in a board is not available as such. It has to be sorted, shredded, smelted and refined. According to the Annales des Mines (2020), copper smelters recover about 98% of the copper and precious metals, but some metals such as tin and tantalum are not recovered by these processes, and the preliminary physical separation steps cause losses of around 15%.
The buyback price per kilo therefore reflects the average content of the category, treatment costs, losses and logistics. On a global scale, the gap between contained and recovered value is wide: according to the Global E-waste Monitor 2024 (UNITAR and ITU), the e-waste generated in 2022 contained US$91 billion of metals, including US$15 billion of gold, yet only 22.3% of that e-waste was formally collected and recycled.
To get the best price: separate your high-grade boards, remove any metal that comes off easily and describe where the batch comes from. Then create your online buyback request: you receive a quote within 48 working hours, and the firm price is confirmed after weighing and inspection at our WEEELABEX-certified centre in Millonfosse (Nord, France).
In short
- According to RSC Advances (2020), boards contain 10 to 1,600 g/t of gold, 200 to 20,000 g/t of silver and 5 to 970 g/t of palladium.
- Even a high-grade board holds only about 1 g of gold per kilo; the value comes from concentration, not quantity.
- Gold sits on the visible contacts and connectors, palladium in particular in some ceramic capacitors.
- As at 15/11/2026, boards are bought at €0.68/kg (low-grade board) to €26.00/kg (hard drive motherboard).
- Recent boards are poorer: manufacturers cut the gold they use when its price rises.