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.
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
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.
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.
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.