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

[Mister Woof]

2 minutes ago, freeagent said:

I agree with everything you said.. I don't know much about bloatware other than I don't use it because it interferes with benchmarks  

 

There is a ton of convenience  that I am missing out on by not doing hardware level things in windows.. I also live with unicorn puke because I really don't like the software that I can use to turn it off

I will have you know that my minimum idle power usage is quite good.

 

 

Just don't mind the max power values

[freeagent]

22 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

Just don't mind the max power values

I don't have my doohickey plugged in right now.. I was trying to find a short.. but last I looked we are about equal. I think mine pulls about 70w @ the wall doing nothing for a few minutes. Without the GPU it will pull about 450 from the wall. Its ALMOST like running X58 again

[Panblch]

Dell still can sell Alienware PC's with 600W+ PSU, but they decide to not, this is nothing to do with regulations, this is just cheap reason to whine about new energy standards. 

[Mister Woof]

1 minute ago, freeagent said:

I don't have my doohickey plugged in right now.. I was trying to find a short.. but last I looked we are about equal. I think mine pulls about 70w @ the wall doing nothing for a few minutes. Without the GPU it will pull about 450 from the wall. Its ALMOST like running X58 again

i used a Killowatt meter once for my whole strip, which includes my monitors (3), PC, desk fan, and speakers.

 

At full CPU/GPU load it was almost 700w

[Mister Woof]

Although that's nothing compared to my mom's space heater that is not only a power hog but also a fire hazard.

[Guest]

12 hours ago, poochyena said:

Wasn't there a new power supply standard or something that significantly reduced power usage?

Anything that pushes for lower idle power draw is good if you ask me. PCs are sooooo inefficient compared to laptops

Yep.  New power efficiency requirements.

 

It's not that Dell can't/won't sell in California and these other states that have adopted this new requirement.  It's just that they'll have to actually build PCs with a better, more efficient power supply.

 

If Corsair/Origin, Digital Storm, iBuyPower/CyberPowerPC, etc. can do it, so can Dell/Alienware.  They just don't want to suck it up and use a PSU that's going to cost them $1.50 more.

 

[wanderingfool2]

23 minutes ago, SlidewaysZ said:

A car also doesn't make people money. Some people need the compute power for work. What are they going to do tell people to stop using computers? Any power requirements on something like a household computer is excessive. Like someone mentioned above water fountains that run all the time get higher power draw limits. Once again this is a law written by people who have no understanding of the technology or products they are trying to regulate.

If you are going to criticize laws written by people who have "no understanding" of the technology at least glance through the law.  This is idle consumption.  As others have mentioned as well, the targets are quite capable of being met...but through some reasons (maybe the fact that they have an 18watt fan in the system, or bloatware that uses up more power during idle) Alienware isn't able to.  This is also to push the industry to make more efficient systems when not in use.  It's also foolish to think there wasn't any consultation (this covers so many different appliances)

 

Let me put it this way...criticize all you want but it just makes you worse than the people who created the regulation if all you do is read the headline and jump to conclusion that it's written badly (which it is not).  For context as well, the 1.2 kWh/day is for water dispensers that dispenses hot and cold water.  It requires energy to keep the system in hot and cold states, which is why it's allowed a higher per day than a computer would (in idle).

 

To clear this up though lets look at a rough example (worst case) of a system with the addons

50 kWh/year base system power allowed

4 + 0.15 * 16 = 6.4 add-on for ram (16 GB)

0.9 Energy efficient ethernet

29.4*tanh(0.008*B-0.03)+11+(0.011*B) [B = 760 for a 3080] = 48.7

 

For a total of 106 kWh/year.  If you look at the better case scenario though (with the base of 75 kWh/year), it's bumped to 131 kWh/year...it equates to about 360 Wh/day, but that also includes that the system would be in sleep mode/powered off for 50% of the weight...so really this is a problem with Alienware not with the law.

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The way this reads, it does seem sensible.  This is mostly I think targeted more towards businesses, as it's said 7%...and speaking from experience the majority of places require the computer to be left on 24/7 (essentially idling)...so enforcing stricter idle performance is a good thing.  After all, if it's in idle it really should be needing to draw extra power, it's just it does because there is less effort by manufactures to come up with more eco-friendly products at idle (as that's not really a selling point).

That's a function of the OS. In Windows Power Options, the OS defines what the idle period is, and when the monitor can go to sleep. It can also be set to never idle.

 

The monitor doesn't get to decide what the input idle period is. So if the state of California want's to mandate idle periods, they need to talk to Microsoft to add in a "State of California Power Plan" in the OS.

[Mister Woof]

2 minutes ago, StDragon said:

That's a function of the OS. In Windows Power Options, the OS defines what the idle period is, and when the monitor can go to sleep. It can also be set to never idle.

 

The monitor doesn't get to decide what the input idle period is. So if the state of California want's to mandate idle periods, they need to talk to Microsoft to add in a "State of California Power Plan" in the OS.

I think they're working under the assumption the feature is on, and making requirements of power draw when the feature is on.

 

Not it being on at all.

[Roswell]

It’s a good thing no matter how many “gamers” whine about it.

 

Remember when California started pushing emission and efficiency standards really hard in the auto industry? People cried about it as if the sky was falling and then all of a sudden new cars magically had 50% better MPG and emissions a few years later. Makers were being lazy and all it took was the threat of having to maintain 2 separate model lines for CA and the rest of the country.

 

Same thing will happen here. Power consumption on desktop hardware has been way out of hand for years now.

 

36 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

Although that's nothing compared to my mom's space heater that is not only a power hog but also a fire hazard.

Space heaters are 100% efficient. No energy is wasted whatsoever. They’re pretty much as “green” as you can get when it comes to heating a room.

[wanderingfool2]

6 minutes ago, StDragon said:

That's a function of the OS. In Windows Power Options, the OS defines what the idle period is, and when the monitor can go to sleep. It can also be set to never idle.

 

The monitor doesn't get to decide what the input idle period is. So if the state of California want's to mandate idle periods, they need to talk to Microsoft to add in a "State of California Power Plan" in the OS.

Re-read what I said.  Power consumption during idle is not a function of the OS...it's a function of the equipment you have in it.  Yes, the OS does play a role in terms of figuring out when to do into idle states, but that is beside the point.  This is about the fact that when it's in an idle state what is the power consumption.

 

As much as the article and people here are jumping on the "ill thought out law" it's ignoring that the metrics are based on idle consumption and that other companies seem to manage to comply.

[StDragon]

7 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Space heaters are 100% efficient. No energy is wasted whatsoever. They’re pretty much as “green” as you can get when it comes to heating a room.

That depends on how the power is generated. Coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear...etc.

[Mister Woof]

12 minutes ago, Roswell said:

It’s a good thing no matter how many “gamers” whine about it.

 

Remember when California started pushing emission and efficiency standards really hard in the auto industry? People cried about it as if the sky was falling and then all of a sudden new cars magically had 50% better MPG and emissions a few years later. Makers were being lazy and all it took was the threat of having to maintain 2 separate model lines for CA and the rest of the country.

 

Same thing will happen here. Power consumption on desktop hardware has been way out of hand for years now.

 

Space heaters are 100% efficient. No energy is wasted whatsoever. They’re pretty much as “green” as you can get when it comes to heating a room.

Be that as it may, they use a ton of energy and are still a fire hazard.

Wearing clothes is a lot easier and safer.

[Roswell]

8 minutes ago, StDragon said:

That depends on how the power is generated. Coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear...etc.

The source is irrelevant to the individual heater’s efficiency.

 

The alternative is burning natural gas or oil in a central heating system. Gathering, storing and delivering that gas/oil is simply more wasteful by design than simply taking the electricity off the grid.

[Mister Woof]

1 minute ago, Roswell said:

The source is irrelevant to the individual heater’s efficiency.

 

The alternative is burning natural gas in a central heating system. Gathering, storing and delivering that gas is simply more wasteful by design than simply taking the electricity off the grid.

They live in a very temperate place and it never really gets cold. Like lowest in the 30s outside. They turn on the heater and wear t shirts and shorts.

[Roswell]

1 minute ago, Mister Woof said:

They live in a very temperate place and it never really gets cold. Like lowest in the 30s outside. They turn on the heater and wear t shirts and shorts.

When it’s in the 30s you put on you heat. Are you seriously suggesting that you’d rather they suffer in freezing temperatures all day at home?

[Mister Woof]

8 minutes ago, Roswell said:

When it’s in the 30s you put on you heat. Are you seriously suggesting that you’d rather they suffer in freezing temperatures all day at home?

I mean that's the lowest of the low. Usually we're talking low in the 60s, outdoors.

 

Look, I was just drawing a comparison between commonly used items. There are probably a lot more space heaters in use than high-end gaming PCs.

 

That doesn't mean that people shouldn't warm themselves when they are cold, that's absurd. I'm just pointing out that relatively, gaming PCs aren't really significant overall. 

 

You have more people wasting energy on TVs on all day long without actually being watched than any gaming PCs. And that's just power, not to mention wasted bandwidth congestion.

[Touch My Hamm]

*Insert Dell/Alienware joke here*

[Mister Woof]

1 minute ago, GodSeph said:

*Insert Dell/Alienware joke here*

achieved with name alone

[Fasterthannothing]

40 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

If you are going to criticize laws written by people who have "no understanding" of the technology at least glance through the law.  This is idle consumption.  As others have mentioned as well, the targets are quite capable of being met...but through some reasons (maybe the fact that they have an 18watt fan in the system, or bloatware that uses up more power during idle) Alienware isn't able to.  This is also to push the industry to make more efficient systems when not in use.  It's also foolish to think there wasn't any consultation (this covers so many different appliances)

 

Let me put it this way...criticize all you want but it just makes you worse than the people who created the regulation if all you do is read the headline and jump to conclusion that it's written badly (which it is not).  For context as well, the 1.2 kWh/day is for water dispensers that dispenses hot and cold water.  It requires energy to keep the system in hot and cold states, which is why it's allowed a higher per day than a computer would (in idle).

 

To clear this up though lets look at a rough example (worst case) of a system with the addons

50 kWh/year base system power allowed

4 + 0.15 * 16 = 6.4 add-on for ram (16 GB)

0.9 Energy efficient ethernet

29.4*tanh(0.008*B-0.03)+11+(0.011*B) [B = 760 for a 3080] = 48.7

 

For a total of 106 kWh/year.  If you look at the better case scenario though (with the base of 75 kWh/year), it's bumped to 131 kWh/year...it equates to about 360 Wh/day, but that also includes that the system would be in sleep mode/powered off for 50% of the weight...so really this is a problem with Alienware not with the law.

I guarantee you my desktop averages more than 360wh/day even if I shut it off at night and I run a gold standard PSU. I mean have you seen some of the high end desktops available?  The average desktop idles at 100 watts. 360wh/day is 15w an hr

[thechinchinsong]

4 hours ago, BuckGup said:

Why are people so afraid of nuclear power. It prevents issues like this from happening. 

I'd completely agree with you on this one, except that for California's situation, it's a bit like Japan, where there is a lot of tectonic activity in the area. I'd imagine that disqualifies a significant portion of the state from building due to fears of earthquake. Other parts probably have interest groups and citizens furiously lobbying against having a nuclear (or really any kind of power plant) in their backyard.

[poochyena]

1 hour ago, Caroline said:

Ah yes, always blame it on the end users using a computer rather than in the megacorps that pollute every atom of this world.

Point me to who is doing that. Try it. Because if you want to claim that CA of all places add regulations on consumers and not corporations, then you can't be taken seriously.

[soldier_ph]

So Gamers Nexus bullied Dell so hard into oblivion that they stopped selling their High End Desktops in certain Regions of the US ? Got it. 

[Factory Factory]

Okay there's a LOT of FUD in the coverage. I'm a paralegal and I did a deep dive of the regulations, specifically 20 CCR secs. 1605, 1604, 1602, and the Energy Star testing methodology.

 

tl;dr: The only reason the regs give that might block these particular Alienware systems is that their ACPI S3 Sleep state power consumption is over 10W from the wall. On a system that can have a 1000W power supply, that's actually not very surprising. It's hard to make big PSUs efficient at small loads. ATX12VO will help this in the long run.

 

So, about the regs and what they actually mean:

 

First, the yearly power consumption is not measured at load. The Energy Star methodology the regs refer to is a weighted average: yearly power consumption if the system is 55% turned off, 5% in sleep mode, and 40% idling at desktop. Load power consumption is not part of that power budget; it's all about idle-or-less power efficiency. When you include the beefy add-ons to the power budget for a discrete GPU, it's actually pretty easy for a modern machine, even DIY, to hit the power target. 

 

E: Note: The regs specify Energy Star for computers 6.0. The current version is 8.0 and distinguishes more for short idle and long idle power draws.

 

The biggest crunches will probably be mini-ITX gaming machines with limited ports, since ports are how expandability score is measured and more expandability = more power budget. But even so you'd need a comically small number of user-accessible internal and external ports (like base tier M1 iMac small) to hit the most stringent limits and be seriously threatened by a typical 65W desktop idle.

 

Second, "high expandability" machines are exempted from the yearly consumption altogether, like workstations. A high expandability machine is one that either has a shitload of ports (there's a table in 20 CCR 1604), or it has a 600W+ PSU and a GPU with 600 GB/s of VRAM bandwidth (20 CCR 1602). 

 

These machines' only requirements are:

• Use an 80+ Gold or better PSU (for internal PSUs)
• ACPI S3 Sleep state power draw is 10W at the wall or less, plus 0.15W per GB of RAM over 32
• If it's shipped with an OS installed, power management is configured to turn off the screen after 15 minutes and enter S3 sleep after 30 minutes

 

Third, DIY is definitely not affected. Small-run boutique builds under 50 units have the same requirements as the high-expandability/workstation requirements above. If you want to sell a build to a friend, that won't make you an energy criminal in California. 

[CarlBar]

Let me throw my oar back in here and note somthing. I made an offhand comment about my own system's idle draw but i was making that statement based on the state in which i commonly use it. Reality is this standard will have a typical test configuration that won't include all the stuff, (mainly chrome tabs :P), i have open in the background. Meeting a sub 60w, hell even a sub 10w idle draw, is well withing the physical capabilities of good hardware. My system doesn't hit that because i keep a lot of stuff running, i use a short sleep timer instead these days.

 

The other thing i want to hit on the head is the idea that the issue is because of them using a mere gold PSU, it' not, as my own case with a Titanium model shows even a really good PSU is no good if there's enough stuff loading the hardware.

 

Thats not to say Dell, various hardware vendors, and even software vendors couldn't and shouldn't take steps to help lower these power numbers, (i suspect my own value is also inflated by me using an older less power efficient per processing power Zen+ CPU), but the bulk of this whilst on dell is more on the software configuration than the hardware side of things.