Hey guys.

I live in Australia so everything costs more. Computer parts are no exception. I have family heading to Oakland, CA soon and I wondered. Would it be possible to order my GPU on newegg for the much more reasonable US price, have it shipped to their hotel and have them collect it and bring it back to Australia.

Would this work? Can you even ship to hotel? Would it somehow get stolen by customs?

Let me know if you've done anything like this or if you think it wouldn't work.

Bonus question: gtx 970 or 980?

980, and your pc parts might be thrown around by careless baggage guys and they will be tightly packed in a warm plane.

@believer258: I'd probably have them taken on carry on luggage unless it'd break the weight rules. GPUs while having huge boxes arent all that heavy are they?

Oakland has a holiday destination, that's... Interesting?

@hayt: i've actually never been in an airplane but pc parts and packaging are probably too big fot that, if not too heavy.

I would be about 90% sure that either of those cards would be too big and heavy for carry on. I mean they're pretty damn big things themselves.

Uh, I have no clue what you guys are on about. If I can get a laptop, PS3 with 6 games, and a few days worth of clothes into my carry on then a GFX card would be no sweat.

Yeah, my girlfriend flies every other week for work and she brings her 17" laptop and her PS4 in her carry on. A GPU would be no weight or size issue.

@alexw00d: apparently I was wrong. They are seeing a gig in Oakland but staying in SF

You absolutely can ship things to hotels, I have done that numerous times myself. I suggest calling the hotel manager ahead of time and double checking if they have any special procedures, and just to let him or her know that something is coming as a heads up. I wouldn't think twice about doing this at any of the nicer hotels here in San Francisco, it is a very common thing for people to do.

One thing to keep in mind is that the box for a 970/980 is quite large, after all the card itself is something like 27 cm long. It will end up occupying a good portion of the carryon it's stuffed into.

After traveling from the U.S to the UK... and back again as recently as February with the most heaviest laptop you could even imagine humanly possible I can safely say that a GTX 980 would be very acceptable and legal as a carry-on luggage. Just make sure its not part of the actual luggage it will get broken I can guarantee you that. My laptop weighs 13Lbs on its own, my cary on bag must have weighed well over 20lbs with everything else I had in it, and as an owner of the MSI GTX 980 4G card, I can safely tell you that card weighs absolutely NO WHERE NEAR that much.

Bottom line: yes you could do that. Just make sure if they get stopped by customs or asked about it, make sure they know what to tell them, that its a gaming graphics card for a PC.

@hayt: One thing you should consider is that, depending on the manufacturer, you may not be able to claim on the warranty of the card unless you ship it all the way back to the US. So if anything goes wrong within the first year or two you'll be even more out of pocket than you would be by buying locally. Some companies like EVGA offer a global warranty, but you definitely need to double check the details before purchasing anything.

Thanks for the replies everyone! Given me stuff to look into for sure. Regarding the warranty I've never had need of one in my decade of pc building my definitely worth noting.

You probably just jinxed yourself into needing warranty support!

You could just buy it from Amazon and save yourself the trouble. Shipping is usually pretty reasonable. I bought a lot of my PC components this way, and I'm in NZ. For the things Amazon wouldn't ship directly to NZ, I used the NZ equivalent of this.

@khann: huh thats supremely weird. Amazon often tells me that it wont ship me books or dvds so for it to say gpus are fine I did not expect. Not sure if it'll be cheaper but more options are nice so thankyou!

@hayt: Yeah they've gotten much, much better with the amount of stuff they'll ship internationally. Going through the AmazonGlobal page is the easiest way to find all the stuff they will... or you can click the "AmazonGlobal" search filter on the left sidebar in whatever section you're browsing.