Ship or sell?

[nde]

Hi,

I am going to be moving from the US to the UK, and I was thinking whether to ship my desktop PC or to sell it and get a new one over there. Here is my setup, which I bought back in 2011:

setup

Also, I have 2 LG flatron w2353vp monitors.

I did an eBay search on used items, and if I include my monitors, the total current value of my setup comes up to approximately $580, if I am generous. I paid about $1200 for it back in 2011.

I have the following options:
1) Sell the case and monitors and keep the components (pack them in my suitcase), then buy an identical case in UK and reassemble.

2) The above, but shipping the monitors instead of selling them - if I could take them with me on the plane that would be nice, but they're 23" and take up space.

2) Sell everything and buy a new setup in the UK (which includes the hassle of figuring out compatibility between components, time to assemble, etc.)

The bottom line is, I quite like my setup, it's fast enough for what I do, and comfortable. However, I would like to make the best decision. What do you think? Any advice would be highly appreciated.

 

[i7Baby]

How much to ship it?

 

[Warukyure]

A) Is your computer used for gaming and such?
B) Do you plan with sticking with what you have for quite some time?
C) The plane you are taking, how much do they charge to bring "additional luggage"?

First off, computers in the UK will be much more expensive than buying one in the US, depending on what you're really going to do, I'd say sell 1 monitor, sell the tower, keep one of the monitors and then buy a laptop while you're still in the US. You'll probably lose a bit since your computer is a bit older and isn't worth as much, but in the long run you save since computers are much cheaper in the US. Also a laptop is really easy to bring in your suitcase/carry-on.

Second thing, if you are really attached to this computer shipping it, one Fedex at least will cost close to $350, not even including the packaging/shipping insurance/additional fees. You could also see how much the airline would charge for you to send an oversized package. (I'm sure you see it all the time on luggage claim, that really big brown box covered in 3 layers of tape just because they can.) Usually that's a bit cheaper.

Lastly, if it really came down to it and you don't game or anything, you could consider buying a computer in the UK to replace your aging one, but be warning, because of their tax, VAT, their dollar, and the overall cost of ownership or something, its gonna cost anywhere from $200-$500 more than what you would pay for something in the US. Heres an example, using Amazon UK, a gaming laptop, the ASUS ROG G750, pretty standard, goes for $1300 GBP that converts to over $2000 USD. On Amazon US, roughly the same specs/model/manufacturer, only costs $1500. Now you might not be getting something like this but its just to illustrate the price differences.