IC chips

do most people take IC chips off of PCI boards?

Socketed yes, but everything soldered stays on finger cards

Agreed- if it's socketed, I pull it. Soldered? Nope. That devalues them.

That being said, very rarely will I find a PCI card with an IC chip that's in a socket.

I've found maybe a dozen like that. 99% of my cards just go in the "Cards" box.

I only pull them off of low grade boards.

Any more I leave them on mid to high grade boards since the price drop. Low grade gets removed.

I usually desolder what I can but I'll leave certin boards like gold-tinned memory or motherboards alone.