Alienware no longer shipping high end gaming PCs to certain US States, citing new power consumption regulations

[poochyena]

57 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

Not false, but misleading. You can disagree all you want, it's doesn't change the fact that it WAS misleading. Not saying it was false, simply that is written in a way to paint the states as the bad guys, while this isn't the case, Dell was aware of this since 2016, and yet didn't take any steps to prevent it.

Completely untrue. You could only read that as painting CA as the bad guy if you ALREADY were bias against CA. If you hate CA with all your guts and think everything they do is pure idiocy, then yes, you could absolutely read that as CA being bad.. but you could do that even after reading all the facts too. Both parties are involved, CA changed laws and Dell didn't change their systems to follow the laws. The headline paints thats fairly clearly and unbiasly. If you hated dell more than CA, then you could just as easily read it as painting Dell as the bad guy. Dell refusing to make power efficient devices to follow the law. The only way you could read the headline as bias, is to be bias yourself. I can GUARANTEE you the ONLY people who read the headline and concluded that CA is bad are people who already had long history of hating CA.

 

57 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

The title should've been "Dell can't ship some PCs to several states because they didn't take new regulation into account they were aware of"

That is unprovable and would be bad journalism unless they actually said that. We don't know what they considered. For example, I considered UK's new brexit VAT system, and I just chose to stop shipping products there. So they absolutely could have taken it into account and chose not to ship there.

52 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

But they aren't wrong about Tesla, since they mentioned how much power an EV uses which is obviously much more than a gaming PC

Thats right. Where he is wrong, as I mentioned in my post, is him saying "they get a pass".

[IkeaGnome]

Just now, poochyena said:

I can GUARANTEE you the ONLY people who read the headline and concluded that CA is bad are people who already had long history of hating CA.

I thought it was California being California before I read the articles...

 

It's also funny how worked up people are getting over this. There's simple work arounds.

[Mister Woof]

3 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

I thought it was California being California before I read the articles...

 

It's also funny how worked up people are getting over this. There's simple work arounds.

 

I find it amusing that someone actually believes news is neutral and they play no part in influencing their readers.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

 

The Alienware R10 Ryzen edition seems to have several problems,  the PSU is rated for 80 plus gold but it still probably doesn't meet the low load regulations going by from what people are saying in this thread. The exhaust fan can use up to 18 watts, and the CPU cooler is inadequate for the CPU causing it to run so hot it throttles, which might also hurt efficiency. I'm not sure about liquid cooling, or the use of RGB, but that isn't an issue for other companies that build PC's with liquid cooling or lots of RGB LED's and fans.

The PC in question is the R10, the R12 is also affected.

 

So my best guess is basically that which GN pointed out, that the system is is under-engineered. Had they put a proper 7-slot ATX MB, appropriate CPU cooler and quiet PWM fans, it probably would have met the requirements. The Ryzen setup is just bonkers, and I'd be extremely disappointed had I bought one.

 

[poochyena]

43 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

 

I find it amusing that someone actually believes news is neutral and they play no part in influencing their readers.

That depends entirely on the publisher. There are plenty of fair and neutral news organizations out there.

[Elisis]

6 hours ago, CarlBar said:

The PSU's are not the problem

They are. The high load efficiency might be relatively high but because Dell refuses to switch to somewhat more expensive burst mode-capable controllers in their PSUs, they're caught out by the low load efficiency requirements. 

 

6 hours ago, CarlBar said:

GN actually ran a PSU test suite on them and found they where very solid

GN's testing was honestly pretty abysmal and is not evidence against the PSUs being to blame. 

[Spotty]

3 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

The Dell in that GN video was an ATX1VO unit, I don't get why Dell didn't design the Alienware R10 to use an ATX12VO PSU, it seems like Dell is cheaping out where ever they could with the Alienware PC's, but make it look cool with a plastic casing and RGB LED's.

Just because a power supply outputs only 12V does not mean it's ATX12VO. Dell has used proprietary 12V power supplies for at least a decade. Both the Dell and Alienware computers reviewed by Gamers Nexus were using Dell's proprietary 12V power supplies, not ATX12VO. 

 

You don't need to watch the whole video, he says right in the intro that it's not ATX12VO.

[CarlBar]

7 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

The Dell in that GN video was an ATX1VO unit, I don't get why Dell didn't design the Alienware R10 to use an ATX12VO PSU, it seems like Dell is cheaping out where ever they could with the Alienware PC's, but make it look cool with a plastic casing and RGB LED's.

The Alienware R10 Ryzen edition seems to have several problems,  the PSU is rated for 80 plus gold but it still probably doesn't meet the low load regulations going by from what people are saying in this thread. The exhaust fan can use up to 18 watts, and the CPU cooler is inadequate for the CPU causing it to run so hot it throttles, which might also hurt efficiency. I'm not sure about liquid cooling, or the use of RGB, but that isn't an issue for other companies that build PC's with liquid cooling or lots of RGB LED's and fans.

 

They're officially 80+ gold rated with the appropriate  certification. The talk about low load efficiency isn't part of the 80+ Gold standard.

 

5 hours ago, Elisis said:

They are. The high load efficiency might be relatively high but because Dell refuses to switch to somewhat more expensive burst mode-capable controllers in their PSUs, they're caught out by the low load efficiency requirements. 

 

GN's testing was honestly pretty abysmal and is not evidence against the PSUs being to blame. 

 

Then why do all these other OEM and DIY systems have no issues staying within the spec. Oh could it because low load efficiency of the PSU isn't the issue. they've got an 18w fan and 20w chipset in there, it's going to pull a little under 40w without any other components in it and with perfect efficiency, the fact that despite that they hit only a bit over 60w is actually kinda impressive. I can't recall if GN's testing of the PSU included low load tests, i'd have to dig back into the archive to find out because my memory has gone blank.

[TechGod]

On 7/30/2021 at 3:49 PM, Mister Woof said:

California has done some shady shit in the past on several things, which makes it very easy to eat up what these journalists were printing. 

 

Their track record also creates some distrust among the residents, and outsiders, so it should not be surprising that people jump to conclusions and publications write their articles to aim to foster them.

 

I'm happy to live here compared to other options, and most of the things the State does I am on board with.

 

I at first believed from the articles that this was for sure the case, but after reading some of the other posters here I've accepted that isn't what's going on.

While you realise that now, just look at the knee jerk reactions about how evil California is. 

[Elisis]

30 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

Then why do all these other OEM and DIY systems have no issues staying within the spec

Likely because they don't take the cheaper route with their PSUs when selling to e.g. CA?

[Mister Woof]

23 minutes ago, TechGod said:

While you realise that now, just look at the knee jerk reactions about how evil California is. 

There's going to be people who believe what they want no matter how much evidence they're shown.

 

The pandemic is proof of that.

[poochyena]

Hey, speaking of clickbait

[Blademaster91]

5 hours ago, Spotty said:

Just because a power supply outputs only 12V does not mean it's ATX12VO. Dell has used proprietary 12V power supplies for at least a decade. Both the Dell and Alienware computers reviewed by Gamers Nexus were using Dell's proprietary 12V power supplies, not ATX12VO. 

-snip-

You don't need to watch the whole video, he says right in the intro that it's not ATX12VO.

Thanks for the correction, yeah I'm confusing a standard with something proprietary to Dell.

51 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

They're officially 80+ gold rated with the appropriate  certification. The talk about low load efficiency isn't part of the 80+ Gold standard.

 

 

Then why do all these other OEM and DIY systems have no issues staying within the spec. Oh could it because low load efficiency of the PSU isn't the issue. they've got an 18w fan and 20w chipset in there, it's going to pull a little under 40w without any other components in it and with perfect efficiency, the fact that despite that they hit only a bit over 60w is actually kinda impressive. I can't recall if GN's testing of the PSU included low load tests, i'd have to dig back into the archive to find out because my memory has gone blank.

From what others are saying in this thread, the 80+ gold rating doesn't mean a lot if the unit Dell went with only meets the minimum of 80+ gold, other OEMs are going with power supplies that have better low load efficiency.

The PSU is part of the issue, the rest of it is the 18w fan, ineffective CPU cooler, and too much preinstalled crap running on start up that comes with the system.

Is the chipset power consumption part of the regulation or Intel spec? If so thats a bit ironic considering Ryzen should be more efficient than an Intel 11th gen system.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

Thanks for the correction, yeah I'm confusing a standard with something proprietary to Dell.

From what others are saying in this thread, the 80+ gold rating doesn't mean a lot if the unit Dell went with only meets the minimum of 80+ gold, other OEMs are going with power supplies that have better low load efficiency.

The PSU is part of the issue, the rest of it is the 18w fan, ineffective CPU cooler, and too much preinstalled crap running on start up that comes with the system.

Is the chipset power consumption part of the regulation or Intel spec? If so thats a bit ironic considering Ryzen should be more efficient than an Intel 11th gen system.

 

The regulation is at the wall power consumption, but the regulation makes no allowance for types of chipset. It's based on connectivity options of various kinds. As someone else mentioned, if Dell had 32GB of memory in there that would increase the idle power allowed sufficient to make it pass even though the power use would go slightly up.

 

The chipset is  power hungry because thats just how Zen 3 chipsets are, i believe it's been attributed by various parties to the high power consumption of the PCIE-4.0 spec.

 

Also dug up GN's testing on the G5 PC PSU, (it's seemingly the same spec as the R10, may even be the same model), and 66w at the wall when you work through GN's graphs to figure out what the what the wall value would have to be given the PSU rating comes out at a bit over 10% load which means >90% efficient, (if the PSU was 0.9% more efficient at exactly 10% it would qualify for the 80+ Titanium rating). All the talk of low efficiency at low draw is just people shooting off their mouths without doing any research.

 

 

[Elisis]

17 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

the PSU rating comes out at a bit over 10% load which means >90% efficient

10% PSU load isn't considered low enough for this. Try 2%.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Elisis said:

10% PSU load isn't considered low enough for this. Try 2%.

 

10% is below the level needed to supply the 66w actual idle value. 2% is completly irellevant because it represents less than 8w of output to the PC components.

[Elisis]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

2% is completly irellevant because it represents less than 8w of output to the PC components.

2%/10W load is taken into consideration by both Intel's ATX 2.52 and CA's CEC.

[CarlBar]

21 minutes ago, Elisis said:

2%/10W load is taken into consideration by both Intel's ATX 2.52 and CA's CEC.

 

Yes but in the context of this discussion about why dells PC failed to meet the new regulation where only concerned about the 66w figure. That requires an output well above 2% of the PSU's rated capacity and thus it's efficiency there is completely irrelevant to why Dell failed it. 

[Elisis]

4 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

thus it's efficiency there is completely irrelevant to why Dell failed it. 

It's most assuredly not. It is a large factor in Dell's failure, given, y'know, cheaper PSUS, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the main one. CA is definitely concerned with 2% loads.

[leadeater]

25 minutes ago, Elisis said:

It's most assuredly not. It is a large factor in Dell's failure, given, y'know, cheaper PSUS, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the main one. CA is definitely concerned with 2% loads.

The PSU really isn't that bad, there is better but the PSU isn't the sole reason for why it failed. And the problem with the current CA proposal is doing something which for the purpose of the legislation is illogical such as putting in 32GB ram which somehow makes it power efficient to pass the standard being used. An effective power efficiency standard should but unaffected in passing grade whether it is 8GB, 16GB or 32GB.

[Jeppes]

15 hours ago, poochyena said:

No, because you blame "the media" for the problems in society.

There is nothing irresponsible with reporting the facts, which is what they did. You have yet attempt to explain how "Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations." is false in any way.

Because it is misleading. You could also report that thousands died inside 24h in China in an area that has been suffering from new covid cases. They died in a flood but you create a narrative where people think otherwise. People like Goebbels do exactly that until people cant tell no more between the truth and lies. After that its only lies.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Elisis said:

It's most assuredly not. It is a large factor in Dell's failure, given, y'know, cheaper PSU's, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the main one. CA is definitely concerned with 2% loads.

 

Except again it isn't because at the level where it's failing it operates at over 90% efficiency. At this point your going in circles.

 

Let me repeat the highlights.

 

At the point Dell is failing it's drawing >60w at the wall, this requires that the PSU be operating at over 10% of it's capacity. It can't draw that much from the wall at less than that because the efficiency even at 2% is not low enough to allow it. And since it IS operating at over 10% capacity it has excellent efficiency and thus it's 2% values is irrelevant.

 

Unless your using a >1KW PSU in a very low draw system 2% efficiency just does not matter because 2% capacity isn't enough on any PSU smaller than that to run any system even at idle, and even on a PSU that big you need a very low draw for 2% of it to be enough to run a system.

[SlayerN]

I didn't see this link in the thread, but this is California's larger report on the effect of gaming on power consumption.

https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/CEC-500-2019-042.pdf

 

From their abstract:

Quote

While simultaneously quantifying efficiency and gaming performance is problematic, evidence suggests that efficiency can be improved while maintaining or improving user experience. Familiar energy policy strategies can help manage gaming energy demand, although mandatory system-level standards are not promising (component-level measures may be)

 

There's also a lot of talk about the potential for a energy-per-performance rating for computer hardware parts; measured by the ratio of FPS to watts, and for games based on their average watt use per play session. Ultimately this particular report doesn't draw any strong conclusions for a potential course of action, but CA lawmakers commissioned a follow-on to look deeper into actionable plans, which we'll probably see either later this year or early 2022. I think this current discussion is going to get a lot bigger sooner than we think.

[poochyena]

3 hours ago, Jeppes said:

Because it is misleading.

Explain how so

[Jeppes]

Just now, poochyena said:

Explain how so

Because it caters to a narrative where you could not send high-powered pc:s to California and tries to make California look wanky. Correct headline is Dell wont comply to rules they agreed on and are forced out of 6 states. People are stupid and misleading clickbait works. Bad journalism and unethical.