Flying with a computer tower

Walter

I need to take a computer tower home from vacation with me. I'd like to save some money and avoid shipping it across the country. Anybody have advice about flying? I will probably just box it up and check it since its a little too big to carry on but I'm worried about how its going to be handled. How do most people take their computers when they travel?

Regicid3

Ship it.

Regicid3

It's your pride and joy, isn't it? Do you really want to risk it?

Eat_Fire

A guy brought a laptop in for repair once when I worked at a tech shop. To be more specific it was a laptop he checked at baggage instead of carryon. The laptop was shaped like a banana.... im not joking. Baggage handlers are more commonly known as "tossers."

Bite the bullet and ship it.

Darmak

Yeah, ship it. Baggage handlers don't give a shit about your luggage, they just chuck all that shit onto the plane as fast as they can. Fuckers.

Derrick

Ship it and pack it well. I work at Fedex. Ideally you want to be able to drop the box from waist height and not worry about the contents at all.

TL DR

You might want to consider individually packaging the components then.

Loathing

Ship the fucker if you value your life.

I vividly remember my five hour layover in Italy - was bored so I watched the airport from one of the bigass windows on the fourth/fifth story of the terminal. Got to watch the little hanger door thing where all the little luggage trains come out of.

Yea, they just came out full speed and turned, and probably a good three-five suitcases/bags/whathaveyou just flew off them. They didn't bother stopping to pick them up, and a fucking security car ran a few over. Not like "Oh shit I didn't see it" but like "Oh haha we just hit some guys luggage, look for more man".

When we finally got back to Toronto, guess how my suitcase looked?

Ship it using Fedex/UPS and pack the living jesus out of it, or just pack all the parts separately. 95% they're great for shipping stuff but the rare occasion happens when you're package is squished. (a game I ordered got mailed to me in one of those padded envelope things and got kinda squashed but no big deal).

ASimPerson

If it only has one hard drive, take that out and keep it in your carry-on (the HD is the most vibration sensitive component). Ship everything else. (If you have more than one, well, make some decisions.)

Under no circumstances should you check it. Unless you don't like it.

bobmyknob

How big is it? If it's a huge tower, ship it.

HOWEVER, if it's a small shuttle case or something, you could totally carry it on.

Fizban140

I had to do this about a year ago, I had no problems. All I did was get a big box, put some packaging peanuts in it, put my tower in it, and then fill it nice and tight with more peanuts. I looked like a jackass carrying around a huge box but my computer wasn't damaged at all. I saw the luggage guys toss it around too, even though I wrote FRAGILE all over it.

All though I would ship it, the only reason I didn't was because I did not have an address to where I was going and didn't like the idea of my family shipping it down.

OremLK

There's a reason so much checked luggage gets lost, it's because the baggage handlers at airports don't give a shit about people's stuff.

Like everyone else already said, you should ship it, or better yet not bring it at all. I wouldn't even ship my computer personally.

AresProphet

Shipping a PC is the way to go. Especially if it's a big tower.

The only components you'd really want to consider packaging separately are the hard drive and the graphics card. The hard drive because it's got moving parts and stuff you don't want to lose, and the graphics card because if it's a newish one it's probably really fucking heavy with the heatsink and if it jostles a lot it could get bent in the port.

But even if you don't package those separately you're probably fine. Lots of packing peanuts, in a box with 4-6 inches of clearance in all 3 dimensions. Maybe even double box it, with two layers of peanuts. The packaging itself shouldn't be more than a couple bucks. Get shipping insurance too, should only be a few bucks.

Cynic Jester

You have two choices. Ship it, or take all the internal components as carry on and let them toss around your empty tower. I flew with my tower about half a year ago, never again. Processor fan/sink drops off, hits graphics card, still manage to make it run however. For all of 5 seconds until my PSU throws a hissy fit, burns out my mobo and yatbuawbtajbsgabngjsbagjnasg.

Save yourself some hassle and hair for later in life. Do not let them handle the important parts of a computer.

Szechuanosaurus

If you ship it, slap FRAGILE - COMPUTER INSIDE labels all over it and make sure whatever shipping option you are taking out has substantial enough insurance to cover the cost of replacing the computer if it turns up damaged. In my experience, courier companies aren't much better than baggage handlers - they manage to fuck up delivering stuff like printed paper without loosing or irreparably damaging it about 20% of the time, so I'd find it difficult trusting them with something as delicate as a computer. Personally, I'd be considering removing the heat sink and fan assembly from the CPU as well as taking out the hard drive and graphics card, because depending on how heavy it is, a sharp shock could potentially rip it from the CPU, damaging the motherboard and the processor in the process.

Frankly, I don't know how you're going to get all those parts safely through an airport anyway, though. Security would shoot first and ask questions later if they x-rayed your carry on and saw a selection of computer components inside it (not really, but I'm not sure how happy they'd be about you taking them on-board a plane in this current climate of misdirected fear and extraneous, pointless 'security' measures) and I don't know if they'd be much safer packed in your hold luggage than carried by courier. I've only ever transported tower cases personally by car, I didn't even trust our removal company to carry it 20 minutes down the road when we last moved house.

supabeast

Depending on the size and value of the case, it might be cheaper to pack the components, ship them across country in a small lightweight box, and pop them in a new generic case at home.

OremLK

Szechuanosaurus wrote: »

If you ship it, slap FRAGILE - COMPUTER INSIDE labels all over it and make sure whatever shipping option you are taking out has substantial enough insurance to cover the cost of replacing the computer if it turns up damaged. In my experience, courier companies aren't much better than baggage handlers - they manage to fuck up delivering stuff like printed paper without loosing or irreparably damaging it about 20% of the time, so I'd find it difficult trusting them with something as delicate as a computer. Personally, I'd be considering removing the heat sink and fan assembly from the CPU as well as taking out the hard drive and graphics card, because depending on how heavy it is, a sharp shock could potentially rip it from the CPU, damaging the motherboard and the processor in the process.

Frankly, I don't know how you're going to get all those parts safely through an airport anyway, though. Security would shoot first and ask questions later if they x-rayed your carry on and saw a selection of computer components inside it (not really, but I'm not sure how happy they'd be about you taking them on-board a plane in this current climate of misdirected fear and extraneous, pointless 'security' measures) and I don't know if they'd be much safer packed in your hold luggage than carried by courier. I've only ever transported tower cases personally by car, I didn't even trust our removal company to carry it 20 minutes down the road when we last moved house.

I agree with every single thing above. I wouldn't even ship my computer because of the aforementioned problems (hard drive getting screwed up, heat sink ripped off the processor and bouncing around crushing things, video card bending/cracking in its slot)... just way too much that can go wrong.

If you must ship it, do what Szechuanosaurus said and take those parts out.

Edit: One thing to mention though, only put the "COMPUTER INSIDE" part if you're 100% certain that they will require signature on delivery, because that's just asking to be stolen.

Khavall

Um, also are we talking about, like, a custom built cutting edge $1,000+ computer tower or a $250 Wal-mart tower?

You might want to disassemble the thing and package in little boxes inside a larger box too, even if you write "FRAGILE" and do the insurance thing, and then reassemble when you're home. I mean I know that's an hour or so of time if you're really careful and methodical disassembling and reassembling, but really that's a small price to pay for not having the thing break on the way.

But yeah, shipping is safer than flying, and shipping in pieces is safer.