A couple of LGA775 processors.
There's a few more that haven't arrived yet, about fifty in total.
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I'm irrationally enthralled by your pile of obsolete CPU's.
I go through phases of collecting them. I just pull them from salvage mostly. I never had a haul like that.
They can make for cool keychains - you can get the chains and rings at hardware stores. I always taped em to a box and drilled through with regular wood bits... easier if you start small and go up. Kinda heavy with the IHS, and I'm pretty sure they're soldered, but it's doable. I hang my keys on my pants like a douche, though. Couldn't have a whole CPU IHS and all in my pocket.
The exposed die looks way cooler - it's too bad there's solder to wrangle with. I had one of those older Athlons with the exposed die... loved seeing all of those colors and it gave me a lot of opportunities to explain a little about CPU's to people who saw it and wondered what it was. I just snapped the pins off/sanded the nubs, drilled a hole, ran a keyring through, and put maybe 10 thin layers of spray lacquer on it. Sadly, I lost that, along with all of my keys (including work keys) on a hiking trip.
I like
@Valantar's epoxy idea. Sounds kinda bulky, but totally worth it. You could do little desk decorations/paperweights and suspend them a random angles - mix in a bunch of smaller smd's to accent. You could sell them on Etsy and eventually make back the cost of the epoxy... probably even net enough profit to get a modern entry-level CPU.
Shit, if we're talking epoxy casts... maybe a tabletop or a monitor stand? Even the legs could be CPU's lol.
Got ceiling fans with pull chains? There ya go.
Personally with those 775 chips I'd try to cover a side panel of a retro xeon rig with em. Maybe even the whole case! It's like bedazzling, but more manly and
technical
Ooooo... you could stack them and glue them to make little shelves or display platforms! That might be neat. Or brace them together to make reversible coasters! Same deal... epoxy mold.
If you really wanna get fancy, get enough together to comprise both the trim and backing of a frame that holds a big, full wafer. For the background you could show the contacts, while the trim shows the IHS's. Or vice-versa. That would be sick as hell. If you don't do this, I will.
Gold extraction seems cool, but it's a lot of futzing with hazardous chemicals only to be operating at cost or worse. You're not making money, even if they're free, I'd think. It's such a small amount of plating. Might be cool if you're just collecting the gold as a sentimentality. Personally I'd rather have the CPU's intact. Though somewhere in this place I have a mason jar that's literally full of those snapped pins.
The ones I'd want are the ceramic ones... those come in different shapes and sizes. So you can make all sorts of things from them. Always wanted to do a 2-3' wall mosaic with a pile of dead ones (I'd never waste working components from that time - those belong in working machines, while that's still possible.)
BTW... do you have pillars or center support beams in your home? Just sayin... would be cool
Doormat? Toothbrush/pen holder? Speaker stands for your desk?
I can keep going for a while, heh.