PC case small enough to check as hand luggage on an airplane

Hello everyone!

I'm on the verge of purchasing a new system (gaming orientated) and I have a hard time deciding between a laptop or a desktop. For the last 7 years I've owned only gaming laptops (I travel often), nevertheless assemblying a new desktop should not be a problem as I am quite tech savvy.

If I were to build a gaming rig, which case is compact enough to take as carry-on on an airplane and yet spacious to accomodate a GTX 780 (and maybe a closed loop watercooling solution)? To your knowledge, is carrying a PC even allowed on airplanes? I am postponing this build until the Asus Maximus VI Impact gets released.

Keep up the good work, your show is awesome!

Best,

Freeman

Im afraid you will have to go with a laptop, pretty sure they will not allow you to bring a small metal case with allsorst of wires and stuff into the airplane, i might be wrong though, but pretty sure, to the common eye a small custom computer looks like an advanced bomb.

That being said, you can go small, if you go liquid, and no display is needed.

Most of the really small stuff is custom, there are very few complete solutions, but some have started to surface like Intel NUC

 

Another example is Giada PC

Giada D2305

 

Now they don't house anything as powerful as 780, but are really small.

 

You can ofc build you own, more powerful, using something like Fractal Design Node 304 as a case, or something even smaller, its completely up to you.

 

I would propably stick with a laptop for now, if you have the € or $, there is some really nice gaming stuff out there, but its usually at double, if not triple the price of the same performance desktop.

 

*edit,

if you do decide to go with desktop, make sure you take the GPU off, when you travel, or fasten it to the case so it wont break or bend the motherboard.

silverstone SG05. modded front panel to fit a titan. this is as small as youre gonna go if you wanna fit a full length gpu. 

this one

Thank you for the answers guys! 

I was already looking at a choice between SS Fortress FT03B, SS Sugo SG08, Fractal Arc Mini (to have as luggage not carry on) and Cooltek Coolcube Mini.

I wanted to know if someone had knowledge of some different manufacturers, other than the "mainstream" ones.

A laptop is my least favorite option because of the "no-upgrade path" and the fact that I can't get rid of my 'really' old ones (I think I have about 5 or 6 old laptops just gathering dust at my parents'). I don't want another musem piece.

Apple Mac Mini i7 without OSX and with thunderbolt breakout box with Asus DCUII version GTX780?

Seems viable.

And Intel will not be implementing thunderbolt on their NUC i5/i7 vPro models, even though they already offer displayport.

what's the point of taking it on the plane again? if it's a desktop you built, you won't be able to use it without a wall socket

take my advice build your own laptop

go to ebay buy a barebone laptop -you will get the laptop chassi,laptop motherbord and laptop screen rest your components like gpu,cpu,battery,ram,hdd,ssd,optical drive,keybord you can buy seperately and costomise it on your own

but you need time and guts to do that as loptop building is not that easy.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Alienware-M17-R1-Laptop-Barebone-with-LCD-and-Motherboard-M17-R1-BB-B-/181052419669?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item2a2790ae55

 

or

 

if you have more money you can buy a costome laptop form

1-http://www.notebookguru.de/index.html

2-http://www.eurocom.com/

3-http://www.avadirect.com/

4-http://www.xoticpc.com/index.php?ref=47&affiliate_banner_id=1

5-http://www.deviltech.de/

6-http://www.malibal.com/

7-www.sagernotebook.com

they have great build quality

or get the new MSI ones

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112408