Moving your PC to a New location

Justo

Hey guys, most recent thread about this stuff I found was a bit old so I'm trying with a new one. 

Any suggestions for transfering your workstation to a new country? How do you deal with this? Do you disassemble it and take it with you through airport, or use delivery services like FedEx?

I have no idea how to tackle this...I'm not traveling anywhere in particular, just asking. 

AtticusMars

Situations like this is where it is really worth it to keep the original packaging because you can just box it back up in its individual pieces and ship it.

Edit: If you're going to ship a hard drive or anything with data on it you should encrypt the whole disk first in case it is lost or stolen in transit. If you have a pro version of Windows you can use BitLocker to do this, otherwise VeraCrypt is free.

I've never tried but I probably wouldn't take individual PC components through an airport, sometimes they ask you to turn your devices on, gonna be hard to do that when your whole computer is in pieces.

Kwramm

Ship it, but take the HDDs out. Stuff the inside of the PC with clothing - this prevents parts from vibrating or being jolted around, preventing damage to components. I usually don't disassemble heat-sink or GPU - just make sure they can't move around. Put a plastic bag over your PC/monitor, just in case the boxes get wet (you never know). I moved PCs between 3 different continents that way and never had any issues.

Good point by AtticusMars about original packaging - especially for monitors it's a very good idea to keep it.

maximumsproductions

In my opinion, I'd recommend you disconnect the GPU actually. just because of the small tension of the pci, if you ship it..but depends. Besides GPU is super simple to install, so I think its worth it for the small time sink.
and if you have an 'abnormally' large double radiator heat-sink (but for most part eh). same goes for that.

ZacD

I always make sure I transport my computer so that there's the least amount of stress on the motherboard as possible. Normally this means laying it on the side. But if you aren't going to be handling the computer the entire shipment, you definitely want to be very careful with it. Keep all storage on you, and back everything up before tearing it down. As others said, if you have a heavy GPU or heatsink, remove it. I know some PC building companies will fill the inside of the case with Instapak Foam if you would rather spend $10 than tear down and rebuild your computer. 

McGreed

A plus on removing the harddisks, because if your computer goes 'missing' or just have an accident, you can get it covered by insurance, however the data is gone forever (unless of course you have backups somewhere else). I always traveled with it in my hand luggage, where I can keep an eye on it.

Clark Coots

I shipped my PC once without any of these good tips and one of my CPU fan pushpin clips broke off. Luckily the fan didn't come fully loose and rattle around all over the MOBO and other components. Some good advice in this thread to secure the insides and even remove some things.

Gilgamesh

I used to work at a place that made custom build pc's, we used to have the pop-expandable foam packs that you can put either side of your gpu/cpu fan and then put the side on,  they expand and set solid (i think it was called instapak).  It holds all the pieces quite firm but not so firm you can't remove it when the time comes.  I must have shipped about 5-600 pc's in my time there with only ever a few come backs due to shipping damage (usually the box was dropped on a corner that would dent the case).