Guest essay by Eric Worrall
I have long predicted Californian support for the green revolution would evaporate the moment it interfered with coffee deliveries to Starbucks. But I never dreamed California would mess with the gamers.
Dell won’t ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations
Energy efficiency rules appear to be limiting the availability of gaming rigs
Thomas Claburn in San Francisco
Mon 26 Jul 2021 // 21:35 UTCDell is no longer shipping energy-hungry gaming PCs to certain states in America because they demand more energy than local standards allow.
Customers seeking to purchase, for example, an Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition R10 Gaming Desktop from Dell’s website and have it shipped to California are now presented with a message that tells buyers they’re out of luck.
“This product cannot be shipped to the states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or Washington due to power consumption regulations adopted by those states,” the website says. “Any orders placed that are bound for those states will be canceled.”
Dell confirmed to The Register that the California ban was down to power consumption regulations, saying:
Yes, this was driven by the California Energy Commission (CEC) Tier 2 implementation that defined a mandatory energy efficiency standard for PCs – including desktops, AIOs and mobile gaming systems. This was put into effect on July 1, 2021. Select configurations of the Alienware Aurora R10 and R12 were the only impacted systems across Dell and Alienware.
…
Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/26/dell_energy_pcs/
Obviously the most elite gamers would sneer at the idea of buying rigs off Dell, or buying any pre-made rig, they are much more likely to assemble their own water cooled overclocked monstrosity in their mum’s basement.
But gamers are in some senses serious people, frequently the kind of nerds who could take down a government system in their lunch break, before the coffee gets cold. Even a suggestion the Californian State Government could starve them of their high end MMORPG fix could end badly for California’s green energy zealots.
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Doesn’t Telsa market their cars with different kWh batteries? California should ban the higher performance batteries because no one needs their car to accelerate from 0-60 in three seconds, right? High performance gaming computers vs. high performance cars: what’s the difference? My guess is that Tesla buyers have an order of magnitude more clout with politicians who put the regulations in place.
“Even a suggestion the Californian State Government could starve them of their high end MMORPG fix could end badly for California’s green energy zealots.”
Yes. It can turn out badly for people who go out of their way to insult high-end computer geeks. I wouldn’t do it.
I’m no gamer…I’m an engineer and PhD student. I’ve been looking at desktops that can handle my research demands computationally and graphically. I’ve seen those warnings not just from Dell but elsewhere (e.g., sellers through Amazon).
What if you have your own solar panels?
The basic theme of this article is illusion and delusion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5fc5ZX6Kzk US States Banning Gaming PCs?? Here’s what’s REALLY going on…
I am a retired EE, Over the decades I have specked computers from 8 bit to 64bit.
Some I purchased and some I build for various tasks.
I am subscribed to JayzTwoCents Youtube channel. I would expect anyone who views the video and is not a Science Engineering and Technology imbecile (SETI), would also understand suggesting the actions of Dell in not shipping some computer model suggests no restrictions on the availability of Gaming computers anywhere. The regulation IMHO stupid and will add compliance costs (time to show item compliance analysis) to all computers and not improve computer efficiency at all.