Shipping PC with heatsink across country

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sethk

2[H]4U
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May 3, 2005
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Hi,

I was planning to ship a PC I'm building for someone coast to coast in the US, and considering how heavy heatsinks are nowadays, I was somewhat worried about it.

I haven't bought the parts yet, but I wanted to make sure I picked a heatsink that is fairly securely mounted and is unlikely to cause damage while being shipped. The whole PC will be put back in the double box that the Antec P182 case ships in and filled with styrofoam peanuts etc, but does anyone have any suggestions for heatsinks that are securely fastened and don't put as much stress on the motherboard versus those that are heavy / not as securely fastened / cause extra stress on the motherboard?

I've been looking at reasonably high end air coolers for a quad core machine.

Thanks!
 
thats kinda tuff it it was the stock intel hsf it should be no prob but to me it gets kinda scary with the big cooler the the tt big typhoon or ultra 120
but the big typhoon vx goes on just like the stock intel one but is def heavy but seems secure
 
n00btard said:
remove GPU and heatsink and pack them separately.
Click to expand...

QFT
Those suckers are heavy, DO NOT ship it with the cooler on the mobo. Mobo, CPU's, heatsink, etc can handle quite a bit of traumatic force if packaged correctly, but not when they are assembled. If some idiot drops your box with a Tuniq Tower or something like it, there is good chance it will break free from its mounting.
 
^ Agreed. You can a take a look at my HeatWare here

I've shipped quite a few things, and I've found that shipping a PC with a copper and/or tower heatsink of any sort (even a stock HSF) is not usually a good idea. I've received a PC that had the entire mounting bracket ripped off in delivery due to the handling of the package/weight of the cooler itself.

Just remove the cooler, and include it in an individual box along with the rest of the stuff, or, if you don't have the room, remove the cooler and tape it down to the inside bottom of the case (assuming there's sufficient room to do this)

Peace
 
Yeah, I think you'd be hard pressed to fnd ANYBODY that could ship it intact - even if they actually treated it like it were fragile. CYA and remove the heavy bits, I owuldn't bother with taping, definitely go for their own boxes....Thus the advantage of keeping tje retail boxes stuff comes in - security in the case of RMA or shipping..
 
Don't ship it with a large HSF. Even if it gets there intact, you won't know if the motherboard has small micro fractures on it until much later on when problems arise intermittently.

If you must ship it with the large HSF attached, then use a backplate to mount it securely.
eg., Thermalright 775 mounting kit.

Also, the resting position of the case must be sideways so the HS is vertical and resting on the motherboard. Place some spongy foam between the HSF and sides of the case to prevent movement. The computer case box should be placed within another box that is almost cube like with the height smaller than the sides. This is to ensure the best configuration against gravity has the computer resting on the side position with the HS on top of the motherboard. If you place it in a rectangular box, it will surely be shipped in a vertical position and it won't get it there in 1 piece.
 
Thanks for all the feedback - I'm glad I asked. Here's the issue - I'm building it for a family member that probably doesn't have the technical expertise to mount the heatsink back, but I guess I'll ask her to find someone locally to re-mount the heatsink. So I should clean off the thermal compound too, I guess. This makes the whole idea of pre-overclocking it (mild though it may be) somewhat more scary, in case the local person screws up the application of arctic silver and mounting of the HSF (as silly as that sounds.)

Let me ask a slightly modified question - which heatsinks are really easy to re-mount, if I've already mounted the backplate - hopefully something that doesn't require the removal of the motherboard once the backplate is installed? Something with good cooling characteristics.
 
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