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

[poochyena]

21 minutes ago, TheMcSame said:

The consumer gets shafted again because of 'MuH cLiMaTe ChAnGe' when the fact of the matter is that big business, shipping, foreign manufacturing, etc are the ones that need to be chased up and hit with much harsher regs.

Can you explain how "big business, shipping, foreign manufacturing, etc" can be hit harder with regulations without also hitting consumers? Companies produce because consumers consume. Its a 1 to 1 action. Businesses don't produce because they find it fun, they do it because consumers demand it. Any legislation demanding higher standards will always naturally pass down to consumers. This law is a perfect example, as it targets companies.

 

24 minutes ago, TheMcSame said:

But it seems like the only solution going is to shaft the consumer at every opportunity and tell them to throw out their old stuff for these new 'green' products.

This is literally the exact opposite of that. Its saying to keep what you have and don't buy a new power inefficient system. If you want to go on some unrelated political rant, go somewhere else, but keep to topic here.

25 minutes ago, TheMcSame said:

There's no way in hell all us John Does and Jane Smiths are making a dent in global emissions in comparison to all the big industries.

Who, exactly, do you think are funding those big industries?

[ouroesa]

Why don't your government start with themselves and large companies?

• Switch all public lighting to LED (street lights, parks, traffic lights, buildings etc) where viable
• Stop using supercomputers to spy on your populous
• Use smart traffic lights to reduce time of standing traffic
• Cook all food by solar /s
• Use only cold water /s

Like how they push all these silly nonsense on people that takes sooo much work to enforce and write new laws to support them etc etc when the reduction of CO2 will most likely be within the margin or error.

 

I'm not too sure what the real intent of this law is as it seems to only really focus on idle power(?) so won't have an impact on crypto mining for the most part it is fairly easy to overcome the idle power limit with some minor optimisations. 

[Elisis]

12 minutes ago, ouroesa said:

Switch all public lighting to LED (street lights, parks, traffic lights, buildings etc) where viable

This actually doesn't make too much of a difference because the currently used HPS/LPS lamps are either as efficient or more efficient than LED lights.

 

 

[ouroesa]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

 

Who, exactly, do you think are funding those big industries?

Depending the company but largely 

1. Government

2. Other companies

3. and sometimes consumers chip in a little bit.

 

I'll use Intel's waver shortage as an example where they will put consumers last as our spending is a very, very small drop in a very large bucket. 

[Zodiark1593]

18 minutes ago, Elisis said:

This actually doesn't make too much of a difference because the currently used HPS/LPS lamps are either as efficient or more efficient than LED lights.

 

 

In pure lumen output per watt, LPS lamps wallop the LED all day. However, peculiarities with the human eye’s sensitivity to differing wavelengths of light (especially rods vs cones), mean that the visible difference in output is significantly lessened. 
 

Additionally, the color rendering of even HPS is pretty terrible. LPS is literally monochrome light. 
 

Not that this is the subject of the thread, but I think taking the hit to efficiency and output is worth the positives of LED. 

[ouroesa]

21 minutes ago, Elisis said:

This actually doesn't make too much of a difference because the currently used HPS/LPS lamps are either as efficient or more efficient than LED lights.

 

 

Not really. 

• Efficiency - Tie (?) (114 to 160 Lm/W vs 80 to 140 Lm/W for HPS)
• Initial cost - HPS cheaper
• Running cost - LED cheaper
• Lifespan - LED lasts longer
• Light pollution - LED emit MUCH less light pollution.

 

Here are the first few that came up with a search, all pointing to LED's 

 

https://www.luxtg.com/led-vs-hps-street-lighting/

https://www.lightinus.com/the-obvious-winner-led-street-lighting-vs-hps-sodium-bulbs/

https://www.heisolar.com/led-vs-hps-street-lights-whats-better-in-2020/

[Factory Factory]

3 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

No.  I have the actual documents here because... it's my job.    There's a low load requirement that 80 PLUS does not cover.

 

Maybe you're not looking at the Tier II TEC limits that went into effect on July 1st.  Tier 1, which has been since 2019, only required Gold efficiency with no consideration for low load efficiency.  Yes... they're talking about watts from the wall and not percentages, but they're really one in the same.  You can't accomplish lower power consumption at lower loads without having a PSU that is more efficient at lower loads.  You cannot simply have an "80 PLUS Gold" PSU and meet the requirements because that PSU is not necessarily efficient at < 10% loads.

 

You'll also note that some of the Alienware PCs that can ship are using an NVMe boot drive while those that can't use a platter drive while all other factors are the same.  Again, this is due to the load load efficiency requirements and the additional power required for the platter drive to spin.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, especially if you've got more documents. But the California Code of Regulations literally has this in 20 CCR 1605 Table V-9 for what servers, workstations, and high-expandability computers need to have for an internal power supply:

 

 

Like, that's right off govt.westlaw.com/calregs. If there's more to the law, I want to know! But where?

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

not just a wait for cert

Probably

 

3 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

is if they are shipping with so much bloat as to be craptasticly bad

But also yes lol. However Dell 100% is not alone on this.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Factory Factory said:

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, especially if you've got more documents. But the California Code of Regulations literally has this in 20 CCR 1605 Table V-9 for what servers, workstations, and high-expandability computers need to have for an internal power supply:

 

 

Like, that's right off govt.westlaw.com/calregs. If there's more to the law, I want to know! But where?

That's totally incomplete.

 

Because simply having "80 PLUS Gold" doesn't mean you're going to meet the power levels at idle, sleep/SOix and vampire power.  80 PLUS simply doesn't test for that.

 

The Intel document that Jayz was using is as new as 3/2021.  I'm not sure where he got it.  I Googled it and can't find it.  I have one with "Intel Confidential" watermarked all over the place, so I'm not comfortable sharing that.

 

 

[Skiiwee29]

Follow up Tweets from JayzTwoCents after his video launch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Factory Factory]

7 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

That's totally incomplete.

 

Because simply having "80 PLUS Gold" doesn't mean you're going to meet the power levels at idle, sleep/SOix and vampire power.  80 PLUS simply doesn't test for that.

 

The Intel document that Jayz was using is as new as 3/2021.  I'm not sure where he got it.  I Googled it and can't find it.  I have one with "Intel Confidential" watermarked all over the place, so I'm not comfortable sharing that.

 

 

Oh for heck yeah there are PSU requirements for getting those low idle numbers. They're just not in the law is all I'm saying. That's probably a policy decision: they want the low power draw but don't care how you get there. Exactly specifying how to reach a goal isn't always good policy.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Factory Factory said:

Oh for heck yeah there are PSU requirements for getting those low idle numbers. They're just not in the law is all I'm saying. That's probably a policy decision: they want the low power draw but don't care how you get there. Exactly specifying how to reach a goal isn't always good policy.

Sure.  Though the Intel document does make suggestions. 

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Follow up Tweets from JayzTwoCents after his video launch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOL!  There's people that think because Alienware can't/won't make a PC that's compliant that "gaming PCs are banned"?!?!?  Holy hand grenade, Batman!  

[CarlBar]

21 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Follow up Tweets from JayzTwoCents after his video launch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone else feel Jazy on this one?

[Mister Woof]

4 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

LOL!  There's people that think because Alienware can't/won't make a PC that's compliant that "gaming PCs are banned"?!?!?  Holy hand grenade, Batman!  

Eh, it's more the fault of media and "journalism".

 

Every news article on this has been saying that.

[Factory Factory]

1 minute ago, CarlBar said:

Anyone else feel Jazy on this one?

Yeah.

 

  

Just now, Mister Woof said:

Eh, it's more the fault of media and "journalism".

 

Every news article on this has been saying that.

Yeah.

[Mister Woof]

15 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It's gonna be fun when cars being charged en mass by public start drawing huge wattages from networks. Currently it's few users sprinkled around. When there will be millions of EV's actively charging at the same time, then that will be fun...

Seems if the journalists did their due diligence, they'd see that it's mostly on Dell and less on the regulations.

 

Of course there's a lot of clickbait here, which is kind of the norm.

 

But imagine how this all would play out instead if they took a Gamers Nexus angle?

 

"Alienware PCs fail to meet even basic power requirements that no other OEM is struggling with."

 

The public response would have been entirely different.

 

Media bares the responsibility of starting a bunch of shit these days.

 

 

[Moonzy]

32 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Follow up Tweets from JayzTwoCents after his video launch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poor Jay shouldn't have touched a topic that requires more than just reading the headlines

[Skiiwee29]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

Poor Jay shouldn't have touched a topic that requires more than just reading the headlines

I haven't watched the video yet, but I think its probably way better than his craptastic PSU guide he did a few months back. 

[poochyena]

2 hours ago, ouroesa said:

Depending the company but largely 

1. Government

2. Other companies

3. and sometimes consumers chip in a little bit.

and where do those other companies get funding from?

2 hours ago, ouroesa said:

I'll use Intel's waver shortage as an example where they will put consumers last as our spending is a very, very small drop in a very large bucket. 

You mean they priorities OEMs such as.. idk... alienware/dell............

are you getting it yet?

[poochyena]

58 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

Seems if the journalists did their due diligence, they'd see that it's mostly on Dell and less on the regulations.

Which journalists are you referencing here exactly? The article in OP's post clearly indicates the issues is Dell. "Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California", not, Dell can't ship

1 hour ago, Mister Woof said:

Every news article on this has been saying that.

oh really? Every one huh? Show me some of them.

[Mister Woof]

4 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Which journalists are you referencing here exactly? The article in OP's post clearly indicates the issues is Dell. "Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California", not, Dell can't ship

oh really? Every one huh? Show me some of them.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dell-alienware-cannot-ship-to-certain-us-states

 

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/325163-alienware-claims-it-cant-sell-high-end-desktop-pcs-in-6-us-states

 

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

 

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/dell-cancels-alienware-aurora-orders

 

https://www.techspot.com/news/90575-dell-cant-ship-alienware-pcs-certain-us-states.html

 

https://wccftech.com/dell-unable-to-fulfill-alienware-aurora-ryzen-edition-orders-in-6-us-states-eco-hazard/

 

These all imply the fault is with the state for imposing newer strict power regulations, not that Alienware is the only SI that's just too shitty to be in business on the western seaboard.

[poochyena]

18 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

These all imply the fault is with the state for imposing newer strict power regulations

Not at all true, even if just from reading the headlines.

"Alienware Claims It Can’t"

"Dell is cancelling"
"Dell just canceled"

"Dell Unable"
Nearly all these headlines lead with DELL. If these headlines began with something like "CA restricts alienware computers" then sure, but the headlines you provided put the emphasis on Dell.

 

The tom's hardware headline is very bad though. headline "Cannot Ship Alienware PCs" article "can no longer ship some of its Alienware gaming desktops". totally misleading to imply its their entire lineup.

[Mister Woof]

14 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Not at all true, even if just from reading the headlines.

"Alienware Claims It Can’t"

"Dell is cancelling"
"Dell just canceled"

"Dell Unable"
Nearly all these headlines lead with DELL. If these headlines began with something like "CA restricts alienware computers" then sure, but the headlines you provided put the emphasis on Dell.

 

The tom's hardware headline is very bad though. headline "Cannot Ship Alienware PCs" article "can no longer ship some of its Alienware gaming desktops". totally misleading to imply its their entire lineup.

We'll have to disagree.

 

The general attitude of the articles puts blame on the state for making it difficult for the mega corporation to do business, not that the mega corporation can't be bothered to put the slightest effort into complying with what appears to be a loose standard and instead cries victim.

[wanderingfool2]

3 hours ago, ouroesa said:

Why don't your government start with themselves and large companies?

• Switch all public lighting to LED (street lights, parks, traffic lights, buildings etc) where viable
• Stop using supercomputers to spy on your populous
• Use smart traffic lights to reduce time of standing traffic

They are though.  The switch to LED public lighting is happening, things like this just take time as it's usually switched out at the EOL (at least here).  It minimizes the cost that way (and staggers everything so you don't have the failure times lining up all together).  Also, the efficiencies between some of the HPS vs LED is relatively small (where LED get's the benefit of needing less maintenance which saves money overall...some of the LEDs perform worse than HPS ones)

 

Government super computers are an important part of security.  Like it or not, they are needed

 

Camera controlled intersections are increasingly becoming more and more of a thing.  They also have road design principles (in some places) to try maximizing traffic flow.

 

23 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Nearly all these headlines lead with DELL. If these headlines began with something like "CA restricts alienware computers" then sure, but the headlines you provided put the emphasis on Dell.

 

The tom's hardware headline is very bad though. headline "Cannot Ship Alienware PCs" article "can no longer ship some of its Alienware gaming desktops". totally misleading to imply its their entire lineup.

All you need to do is look at how many people were blasting about the law being horrible (lawmakers being uninformed), to realize that the way things were written there is a bias towards blaming the law instead of Dell