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VIA Announces Lead-Free Motherboard

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the earth-day-special dept.

linuxprox writes "VIA announced today that their AS-1210 motherboard will be the world's first lead-free motherboard. 'The transition to 'green' manufacturing for VIA has been very smooth and we have been able to ship lead-free processors and chipsets since the end of last year,' said Richard Brown, Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. 'The AS-1210 clearly demonstrates the technology leadership of VIA and Yamashita in being the first to market with a lead-free motherboard that meets the requirements of the international market.'"

9 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. more to read by tedtimmons · · Score: 5, Informative
    I was trying to figure out what the lead was used for (traces, solder, and capacitors was my best bet). The following link from Intel is a press release, but contains a good overview of lead use:
    http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20 040407tech.htm

    And more from Intel:
    http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/leadfree.htm

    And more information from AMD:
    http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResou rces/0,,30_182_4040,00.html

    Disclosure: I don't work for, or own stock in AMD or Intel. I haven't purchased an Intel chip since the Pentium came out.

    -ted

  2. Green Computing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    VIA Green Computing page

    It's too bad they don't do monitors. Those CRTs are the biggest source of lead in computers. Of course, I don't like electrons being shot at my face, so it's not all bad, but still. They are a pain to dispose of.

    Cross your fingers for affordable OLEDs. (fp?)

  3. A nice start, but... by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is really more of a touchy feel-good move than a substantive move in cutting back on the more dangerous parts of the motherboard.

    This doesn't do a thing about the lethal levels of sheel negceba that go through most boards, not to mention the chemicals used in most non-paper capacitors, which are not only lethal poisons, but as tasty as anti-freeze to most animals.

    Add to this the PCBs in the transformer that go with their power supply, and you've pretty much only addressed the fourth worst problem. The real problems have several orders of magnitude more impact on the environtment and worse -- solutions already exist to solve all three for prices only 5-10% higher than what they pay for existing chemicals!

    1. Re:A nice start, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Paper capacitors and PCBs ? Geez, we're not talking about ENIAC's motherboard here. :-)

      Capacitors on modern surface mount motherboards are either ceramic (aluminum oxide) with metal (silver, palladium, tin) layers or "dry" tantalum caps. The ones you're thinking of are probably the "wet" tantalum caps which were wetted with sulfuric acid, which is certainly unpleasant although I wouldn't call it a lethal poison.

      You won't find any PCBs in the power supply transformer, either. Except in some very specialized high voltage applications, they've been banned for at least 20 years.

      I have no idea what "sheel negceba" is.

      Most of the lead in the environment comes from depleted lead-acid batteries, but there's no practical alternatives to those yet so tin-lead solder gets promoted to the top of the list.

      The biggest concern with lead-free solders is the higher temperatures they require to make them melt. Since all of the components on the board are also subject to this higher temperature, there can be negative effects on reliability.

  4. Not because of our blue eyes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They don't do this out of altruism, they have to if they want to sell their products on the EU market, since from 2006, all electronic products will have to be lead free.

  5. Lead by GaussianInteger · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, the earliest pencils WERE made from lead, until graphite was found to be a much better substititute. I wouldn't nitpick, but I think the above nitpicking gives me more than ample justification =). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead

  6. Re:Correct. by DAldredge · · Score: 5, Informative

    Per KwH.

    They also release a lot of heavy metals, so much so that warning about fish from lakes around most of the coal plants in East Texas have been issued due to their high levels of heavy metals.

  7. Re:PC has met motherboards by another_henry · · Score: 5, Informative
    Actually solder is usually 40% lead, so it's not really a miniscule trace. I'd wager there really is quite a lot of it in motherboards and other circuit boards. I know that in the average CRT there's a kilogram or so, used to shield the user from xrays.

    I'm not qualified to say how this can be safely disposed of, or whether it really needs to, but an awful lot of old electronics do end up in public landfills and other locations where they could potentially leach(sp?) into groundwater. It's something worth considering when people are upgrading their electronics and computers annually.

    --
    "Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
  8. Re:Correct. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Which is also stupid, because most of the "waste" that comes from nuclear plants is in the form of clothing, and other consumables not directly related to the operation of the reactor (but contaminated nonetheless).

    I had the opportunity to see some of the stuff that went into the big casques that go to Nevada. Pretty lame stuff. I was expecting 55 gallon barrels with glowing fluid coming out (not really, but it's more fun that way).

    Not only that, but 95% of the stuff produced (yes, produced) by our fission reactors can be recycled, and reused as fuel. The rest of the 5% is in such incredible demand from academia and industry (for research) that it could make a fortune alone. Except our country is too fucking stupid (and paranoid) to recycle spent fuel.