You can tin the contacts but you'll have to make sure there's no excess tin so as not to damage sockets. Use solder wick to get rid of any excess or even as a method to plate the pins. Apply flux, drag the wick with some solder over the pins while holding iron on it. Should work very well and be quick.

Gold doesn't corrode or react with the vast majority of substances - it only gets dirty

Tin plating is used instead of gold plating to save on costs

There are application notes from various connector manufacturers about tin and gold plated connectors mating and all of them say this is something that shouldn't be done as it degrades the gold plated connector.

oohms wrote:

Gold doesn't corrode or react with the vast majority of substances - it only gets dirty

Tin plating is used instead of gold plating to save on costs

Google "gold tin reaction"

Tiido wrote:

You can tin the contacts but you'll have to make sure there's no excess tin so as not to damage sockets. Use solder wick to get rid of any excess or even as a method to plate the pins. Apply flux, drag the wick with some solder over the pins while holding iron on it. Should work very well and be quick.

That's what I thought, thanks for the tip!

oohms wrote:

Gold doesn't corrode or react with the vast majority of substances - it only gets dirty

Tin plating is used instead of gold plating to save on costs

Dissimilar metals in the contact areas (i.e. gold mating with tin) can result in galvanic corrosion. Galvanic corrosion is an electrochemical process in which one metal corrodes preferentially to another when both metals are in electrical contact, in the presence of an electrolyte.

People have been asking this question since like the dawn of DIY. Has anyone actually seen connector corrosion in practice

Does anyone here actually have a PC assembled for an extended period of time? 😀

swaaye wrote:

People have been asking this question since like the dawn of DIY. Has anyone actually seen connector corrosion in practice?

I'm going to try using 30pin 128MB FPM 60ns Parity RAM sticks with gold connectors on a classic BIOSTAR 486 PCI motherboard.
I'd rather not find out the hard way. 😢

The only corrosion / reactions I've seen is stuff like smoker pollution, battery acid damage, high humidity issues, high sulfur air issues, salty sea air damage.

But hey yeah it makes sense to not mix metals if possible.

Oh and I've played with that liquid gallium TIM and that's fascinating. Don't want to let that get in contact with some metals. Including copper. 😀

Fascinating, i did not know that!