Unless you either (a) have very little bagage, and so can take it on the flight, or (b) have a really top-end PC that you’d hate to lose, you’re probably better off just pulling the hard drive(s) out to take home and selling off the rest.
I took all the insides out of mine, and it all just about fitted in the box the motherboard came in, motherboard, expansion cards, hard disks, everything. Just had to get a new case and PSU. How much would the monitor cost to ship ? Would it be cheaper to just buy a new one at the other side ?
Monitors in the U.S. are dirt-cheap now, thanks to the popularity of “flat panel” LCD displays. I was at CostCo in Seattle yesterday, and saw that their 17" (I think it was a Sylvania) cost about US$100.
If any of you guys want a 19" Sylvania F96 in Seattle, I’ll be done with it in two weeks. It’s two years old, still in good condition. I’ll swap you for your (similar quality) monitor in Taipei.
[quote=“MaPoDoFu”]Matthew, are you leaving Taiwan??[/quote]No, but I did, that’s how I know how much space it took. Then I came back and did it all over again. And put in back the case I had in the first place :?
It’s probably not something you’ll want to attempt by yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing. And then there’s the bigger problem of putting it back together again at the other end in the right order.
Depending on how old the machine is (CPU, MB, RAM, etc.) You might want to just consider taking the HD out and bring that back to the US. You can just get a new pc at Fry's for a few hundred dollars and stick in the HD. Considering that you might have to pay extra to send the computer with you. If you have more than 2 checked in luggage, you still have to pay the airline more money to ship it for you. It would not be worth it if you have old equipment.
I would recommend going to Gunghua and asking vendors for a box. It might take awhile, put you will probably find one eventually, and as long as the case is roughly the same size, a little work with a knife on the styrofoam should have it fitting nicely. Alternatively, I would guess those same vendors would charge NTD 200 - 500 (no way you should pay more) to remove the components you really want, and pack them all up for you in a smaller box. Maybe you could just trade them your case and power supply. The problem is you will be looking at US$75 $100 at the other end for a case and assembly, and that is if you take all the internals. Unless it is a good flat panel monitor, there is no way it is worth shipping.
I airmailed my PC/monitor/accessories back to Australia when I left Hong Kong (it came in just under the 30kg/box limit ) And I didn’t have original packing materials either so I just rolled everything up in bubble wrap. Surprisingly, it survived the journey and continued to work fine - although obviously when I did that I was prepared for the possibility it wouldn’t. Shipped this one here, and had the original packaging but deliberately didn’t use it since I was worried about getting hit with duty. The movers just packed it in with a load of clothes. Again, no problems. They might be tougher than you’d expect. Depends how much you :love: your PC though
If you got enough of those shipping peanuts, couldn’t you just fill the inside of your case with them, so that nothing could move even if you dropped it? Then, you wouldn’t need to disconnect the wiring.
But if you’ve got to disconnect the wiring, you should put little stickers on every connection and every wire. There are only about 20 or 30 connections in total to my computer. If the stickers match when you take it apart you can just put them in the right place on the other side. And in addition, you can take photographs of each step of taking it apart. Then you’ll just reverse the order putting it back together. If you put everything back where it came from it will work.
Those little styrofoam peanuts are loaded with static charges. Might as well use peanut butter. Or a blowtorch.
IMHO the main things to pull out would be the heatsink/fan on the CPU and any heavy adapter cards (especially ones that have their own heatsinks, e.g., some video cards).
Unless you’re disassembling the whole thing like Matthew suggests, I wouldn’t worry about disconnecting internal wiring; any drop bad enough to cause a wire to pull loose from its own weight is going to shatter every part inside the case anyway.
If you have just a “normal” sized PC casing, and not too large, you could just carry it on the plane as your carry on. I’ve seen people do that before.