Cali, Oregon, Washington State, Hawaii, Vermont - banning sale of (certain pre-built) Gaming PCs? Cali energy regs for PCs phase in this month.

[VirtualLarry]

Take that, gamers! Well, there's more to the story.

TL;DR: New energy-efficiency standards put in place in Cali, phased in this month (July 2021), means that Dell can't ship most of their AlienWare pre-builts to Cali. Custom-built systems are exempted.

Video title screen is click-baity, but video is NOT.

Regulations revolve around total KWh used per year when in non-active states. More beefy / more expandable PCs get a bigger "score allocation". Systems with 600GB/sec or more of VRAM bandwidth are apparently exempt.

 

[Torn Mind]

Take that, gamers! Well, there's more to the story.

Didn't watch.

Something something mining right?

 

[IronWing]

Click bait is fail.

 

[Greenman]

Answer to the title question is no.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Answer to the title question is no.

Clarified title; answer to clarified title is "Yes".

 

[Greenman]

Clarified title; answer to clarified title is "Yes".

Needs to read "some" prebuilt gaming PC's.
It's just energy compliance regs.

 

[ultimatebob]

Didn't watch.

Something something mining right?

No... something something "Green", something something "Energy Efficient", something something "California".

I guess that we should get used to that. They'll probably be doing the same thing with cars 10 years from now.

Of course, Alienware systems suck now that Dell owns them, so nothing of value was lost.

It will be interesting to see if they start outlawing video cards that take more than 300 watts of power soon. The power usage on the top end cards are getting out of hand.

 

[Pohemi]

Didn't watch.

Something something mining right?

Nah, he explains that the smaller, more efficient systems like ITX or HTPC (prebuilt) are more regulated than the high-power builds. And none of it applies to custom builds.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's just energy compliance regs.

But now, just like in the auto industry, pre-built gaming PCs will need to be "Cali Certified" to be sold in that state, going forward.

 

[Artorias]

Are they going to make them add a sticker saying "May cause cancer"?

 

[highland145]

Are they going to make them add a sticker saying "May cause cancer"?

It won't be cause They, right?

 

[Captante]

Didn't watch.

Something something mining right?

No.

 

[sandorski]

Are they going to make them add a sticker saying "May cause cancer"?

Pretty sure some of the metals/materials used actually do have that risk.

 

[highland145]

Pretty sure some of the metals/materials used actually do have that risk.

No doubt.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Regulations revolve around total KWh used per year when in non-active states.

So... Turn on c-states...?

CPUs sip power on low c-states, GPUs use basically nothing while idle. Why does this regulation matter?

 

[brianmanahan]

i undervolted my 3090 so i think i should be OK

 

[BoomerD]

I live in Washington and have heard nothing about this. I've searched the state's RCW codes, (revised codes of washington...essentially state laws) and found no mention of this. The ONLY thing I can find is stories on the web that say it's happening...but no link to the actual laws about it.

 

[nisryus]

I only saw this when a coworker linked it to our discord channel

https://www.pcgamer.com/dell-is-cancelling-alienware-gaming-pc-shipments-to-several-us-states/

 

[quikah]

There is a bunch of exemptions but seems mostly based on Expandability score. You can see some details on this here:
Program for CEC Friendly Motherboards Public June 2018 (intel.com)

Most likely reason Dell is doing this is that they are using old designs that don't comply. They do offer a version of the Alienware desktop that is compliant with some odd ommissions, like no K CPU on the intel side (but offering a non-K i9) and no Nvidia 1660 or 3060 cards on the AMD side (while offering a 3090).

 

[bbhaag]

Steve over at GN has a better vid explaining all of this. Needless to say Jay and a lot of the other tech news sights click baited the hell out of this....surprise surprise....

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I live in Washington and have heard nothing about this. I've searched the state's RCW codes, (revised codes of washington...essentially state laws) and found no mention of this. The ONLY thing I can find is stories on the web that say it's happening...but no link to the actual laws about it.

The first thing that comes to mind is "fake news' -- that this is some facebook rumor or myth nonsense. But it does make sense -- to limit power requirements of computers sold over the counter. However, your casual research may prove correct.

 

[BoomerD]

The first thing that comes to mind is "fake news' -- that this is some facebook rumor or myth nonsense. But it does make sense -- to limit power requirements of computers sold over the counter. However, your casual research may prove correct.

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if the morons in Olympia pass something like this...but I can't find anything about it except the stories on the various tech sites.

 

[BUTCH1]

So how are these new regulations going to play with the massive amounts of mining gear sold these days?.