So let me start by saying: no good hardware was sacrificed in this project. Only boards that test bad or have no other value.

I've started buying bulk boards from eBay that are listed as scrap. I kinda like the hunt and anticipation of it. Sellers can't really take great pictures when there are 40+ lbs of motherboards and etc. so if I see something that looks interesting, I'll bid and see what happens.

I've gotten a few working SS7 boards along with some fun video cards: Diamond Stealth S220 (Rendition V2100), GeForce 4600 Ti, TNT2 Pro/Ultra, some decent Intel ISA NICs, etc.

There are some that need repair (blown caps, etc.) that will end up in working order.

But I've also ended up with a ton of crap and non-working stuff. PCI Modems, Dell socket 775 boards with mangled socket pins, video cards with seized fans (and dead GPUs), etc.

One of my co workers showed me a picture of a clip board made from a motherboard PCB with all the components removed. Similar to:

I thought this was a pretty cool idea so I started with some of the boards I have:

Now, I don't know if you've ever tired to do something like this, but let me tell you, even with heat guns and reflow equipment it takes a long time. I gave up on the board and did a PCI win modem instead, that still took a while. Surface mounted components came off easily, even the socket 775 which I was surprised. DIMM slots, bus slots, anything soldered through the board requires time and patience and a lot of cleanup. I'll revisit it another time when I've perfected my technique a bit.

Once I had the north and south bridges off I was sort of just looking at them and had an idea:

I couple of power tools later:

And then I threw it on this:

Now I was on a roll, and the next reuse item was a GeForce 2MX with a heatsink that had thermal glue on it 🙁 It took a while to soften and clean it all off:

I also had a dead FX5200 and Radeon 9000. Tiny little heatsinks with fans that gave up spinning a long time ago:

By this point the Intel southbridge had already been in my pocket for a day a quite scratched up so these got a polyurethane treatment front and back, it remains to be seen if it will last long term. I've also got a bit better with the high speed drilling:

I showed my wife and was super excited, her not so much. She did surprise me a couple of days later with some jeweler items to make actual proper keychains and I must say I'm quite impressed with the results so far:

QFP and PLCC mounting also can produce some cool items once the sharp pins are ground off:

I think I may end up selling some on the side on eBay or such. Got a favorite GPU or chipset you want made into a keychain? We don't want to leave the ladies out so I've also got ideas for earrings perhaps?

Thanks for looking, I think I've found my winter projects. It's perfect to keep me busy and also keeping otherwise vintage or old chips out of the landfill. Plus as I get older I've found I want to keep 'junk' less and less. Now I can keep just a chip or two instead of the whole dead board.

Shot of the work area: