Anyone shipped/couriered a full PC?

[Scam]

Just wondering. I'm buying an old system off a friend with the aim of giving it to my mum. He lives in London as I do, so neither of us have a car. My mum lives in Berkshire which involves two trains. So public transport is not going to be fun really. Hate not having a car!

Courier is very straightforward and cheap but I'm assuming [a] I can't send it as is (with no packaging) and there's a very big risk it'll arrive in pieces? Would simply chucking it in a box be adequate? The case would protect it from any hits, but I'm just wondering about components falling out inside..

 

[El_Watcher]

If you really want it to get there in one piece, I would advise wrapping it in bubble wrap, and then putting it inside a cardboard box. Bubble wrap protects from drops, and the box will protect from rain.

If you really want to be double careful, remove any PCI cards and wrap them in antistatic bags separately, otherwise they may come loose in transit and break.

It will cost more, but if you don't you could end up with an unusable PC that the courier won't pay for.

 

[GravyMonster]

Interesting name/post content combination you've got there.

 

[Jonny69]

I used to send them all the time. PCs are surprisingly resilient. I used to prefer to use the original polystyrene, if I could, and a box round the outside. Otherwise you can construct something similar using folded cardboard supports in a bigger box and pack the spaces out with screwed up newspaper

 

[FutileBreadMachine]

I recently sold my old PC case on ebay and sent it using Citi Link and when I saw the delivery slip online it said it had been "left over gate". Immediately I suspected the worst, so I contacted the buyer to ask him and he confirmed that the driver had literally thrown the case over a 7ft gate and dented it as a result, even though I had packed it very securely with bubble wrap in a box. Luckily the buyer wasn't too bothered since he would be keeping the PC somewhere where the dent would not be visible.

 

[Mak3R]

If there's a large heatsink on the CPU I'd remove that. I had a full PC delivered to me years ago and whatever happened to it in transit tore the heatsink and the CPU straight off the motherboard. Was a costly repair...

 

[anything I don't mind]

I have shipped a pc to and from south africa a few times. I used the company excess baggage, not cheap but reasonable and took about 6 weeks.

When i came over from SA to UK last time i took all my components out of the case and took them in my hand luggage. Seeing the faces of the UK border guys scanning my bag was priceless

 

[Speed]

If there's a large heatsink on the CPU I'd remove that. I had a full PC delivered to me years ago and whatever happened to it in transit tore the heatsink and the CPU straight off the motherboard. Was a costly repair...

I've shipped systems with large heatsinks installed, the key is proper padding to stop it moving. Used some dense foam in all directions and it was fine. Same with large heavy graphics cards.

Although if you don't want to go to those lengths, remove and box separately either inside the case or as a separate package.

 

[anything I don't mind]

When i shipped my full tower. I took my hard drives out and took those in my hand luggage and shipped my case was an antec full tower (left all the components in) and a 19" crt iiyama. Took two boxes and just put pillows and duvut in the boxes just make sure there was no room to move.