So I'll be going off to college in a couple weeks and I was wondering if anyone here has advice on how I should go about shipping my computer (I have a full tower.) Should I take out certain components or will it be okay as is? Any advice would be much appreciated.
I would take out any HDDs (SSDs will be fine) and anything hanging from the motherboard (GPUs, sound card, CPU cooler, etc.)
if you can also pack it full of packing peanuts like uber full so full that its hard to put side panel back on. wrap it in bubble wrap place in a tight fitting box and ship it away. ( i have had a pc shipped to turkey this way and it survived the fedex special treatment)
I am a fan of packing paper in a case and making it really dense. I have shipped systems with GPU installed with the paper packed inside so that it fills the entire inside of the case.
I either get the large rolls which is a little thicker and is about 3 ft wide or you can find the thinner and easier to form paper, around 1ft wide, that you can find in the paint section in stores. Cheap and not very messy.
You're not going to like the shipping costs or packing fees if you have someone else do it. I used to work for a UPS store ages ago. You have a few options here.
self pack vs store pack.
Self pack is not hard, but it has to be done right if you ever want to collect insurance if something goes wrong. The case must be bubble wrapped and then put into a box that has at least 1" of peanuts on every side of the box. This means it will be a big big box, and because it is a big box, it will be expensive to ship. You should also consider insuring the package for what it is worth. This gets more expensive.
The store will pack it exactly how I described above at a huge cost - but they write you a check if something goes wrong. If you go the self pack route, I highly recommend documenting with photos how well you packed it. If you do not pack it as I mentioned (or perhaps to an updated method they may have now) insurance will not cover your package. Always be prepared to prove you packed it well with photos.
In addition I personally would take out anything flimsy like a graphics card or maybe a flimsy CPU cooler, and either carry those with you or package them separately in the boxes they came or in the manner I described above.
Hope this helps.