Hard foam? Regardless I'd recommend against shipping with a CPU cooler or GPU installed but some SIs seem to get away with it with self-fitting hard foam packs.

... maybe don't ship a built system then? Those boxes get dropped

That's not a reasonable answer. Many people want to buy assembled systems, and lack the skills/inclination to do it themselves. Pre-built systems is a huge $1B+ market, and "kill the market entirely" is not an acceptable answer.

Your business model is not required to be viable.

I said don't ship them. I did not say don't build prebuilt systems.

This reply doesn't make any sense. It is a viable business model. It has total revenues across all the major players of billions of dollars per year.

And how the hell do you not ship them? You're not making any sense here. There's no alternative to not shipping them, not unless you're planning on having system builders show up individually to clients' houses and assemble PCs on the spot. That business model is way less economically efficient than simply assembling PCs centrally and accepting some breakage in shipment.

Breakage is normal in any industry, what are you suggesting as an alternative? There are companies shipping nationally and internationally with very few issues

Dropped? The UPS guy regularly throws stuff from the curb and I hear it bounce off my front door then land on the front porch.

We didn't have a choice. We were building to a strong spec and sending a unit to trade shows.

That's what internal screws and external padding are supposed to be able to compensate for.