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Power Hardware

Dell Is Cancelling Alienware Gaming PC Shipments To Several US States (pcgamer.com) 86

Posted by BeauHD from the power-consumption-regulations dept.
davide marney writes: Orders for Alienware Aurora R12 and R10 gaming PC configurations placed in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington will not be honored because of power consumption regulations, reports PC Gamer. "Any orders placed that are bound for those states will be canceled," Dell states in a message.

"The Aurora R12 and R10 are built around the latest generation processors from Intel and AMD, the former featuring 11th Gen Core Rocket Lake CPUs and the latter wielding Ryzen 5000 series chips based on Zen 3," reports PC Gamer. "Unfortunately for both Dell and buyers who reside in affected states, the majority of Aurora R12 and R10 configurations consume more power than local regulations allow. There are exceptions, though [depending on the configuration you select]."
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Dell Is Cancelling Alienware Gaming PC Shipments To Several US States More

Dell Is Cancelling Alienware Gaming PC Shipments To Several US States

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  • build your own (Score:5, Interesting)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:47PM (#61632391)

    So build your own system. Dude, you don't need a Dell.

    • Welcome to the wonderful USA-USSR! (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You are a free man, or you are not!

    • Re:build your own (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lije Baley ( 88936 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:51PM (#61632415)

      That's right Steven, anybody nerd enough to read Slashdot should be building their own. Only problem right now is that if it's for gaming, you can't buy a graphics card for any reasonable price. So wait it out. Games only get cheaper as they age.

      • If you think buying a Dell system is the solution to the video card shortage you are sorely mistaken.

        But you're right with the waiting it out, except if your hardware fails. That would suck.

        • If you think buying a Dell system is the solution to the video card shortage you are sorely mistaken.

          On the other hand a very large company like Dell is more likely to be able to secure video cards inventory (probably having signed some contracts well in advance to guarantee that a minimum number of units leaving the factory are reserved for them),

          than "random /. user who buy his stuff of Amazon" (and thus needs to fight everybody else for whatever left over production makes its way to an online shop).

          Being Dell or Apple or Sony isn't a perfect guarantee to have access to some component in short supply, bu

          • No. You're missing my point. Reviews along these lines have said the GPUs are poor assembled are subpar in basically every respect and ultimately recommend you do not do this with Dell even if you are desperate for a GPU.

            At least with other computers you could potentially sell or reuse the rest of the PC, with Dell you're just producing e-waste to obtain cards which don't work well either.

        • Buying a Dell may not be, but buying a non-Dell may well be. And while smaller companies and newegg packagers may ignore these laws at their peril, if the states start cracking down on them, then suddenly prebuilt- the most affordable option for a good graphics card for all or almost all of year to date- will be extremely hard to find.

          I will point out that this is somewhat overblown as a report, but it is still bad news.

      • So wait it out. Games only get cheaper as they age.

        True in many cases, though not all. A lot of video games trade on the used market for collector's item prices, such as Chrono Trigger and EarthBound and Umihara Kawase and Super Smash Bros. Melee and Little Samson. Even downloadable games tend to get withdrawn from the market due to a time-limited licensing agreement with the studio that made the film or TV series on which the game is based, such as DuckTales Remastered. And since March 2020, a lot of people turned to retro video games to pass the time whil

        • These are PC games, not cartridges from 1982 or NFTs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          True in many cases, though not all. A lot of video games trade on the used market for collector's item prices, such as Chrono Trigger and EarthBound and Umihara Kawase and Super Smash Bros. Melee and Little Samson. Even downloadable games tend to get withdrawn from the market due to a time-limited licensing agreement with the studio that made the film or TV series on which the game is based, such as DuckTales Remastered. And since March 2020, a lot of people turned to retro video games to pass the time whil

    • Re:build your own (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ChangeOnInstall ( 589099 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @12:58AM (#61633001)
      I did build my own.

      I also bought a Dell Alienware R10, as it was *BY FAR* the cheapest way for me to obtain the 6800XT graphics card I needed for the system I built.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        How was the 6800XT? Dell branded cards seem to be very hit and miss, some are excellent and some are complete crap.

        Probably helps if you replace their stock cooler, as long as they have stock mounting points.

        • Pretty good so far but it's an odd use case, I just needed something stout to drive an 8K monitor, and wanted AMD for their superior and open-source Linux drivers. Best theory I've heard is it's an MSI card. Does have a metal backplate, no branding beyond "RADEON".

          Does play Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K for hours without cooking.

          Better/more informed review of it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/c... [reddit.com]

          The donor machine CPU is thankfully water cooled, as apparently the air-cooled R10 is horrid: https://www.yo [youtube.com]

      • I did build my own. I also bought a Dell Alienware R10, as it was *BY FAR* the cheapest way for me to obtain the 6800XT graphics card I needed for the system I built.

        Yeah, I had to do something similar with a Newegg system in order to get my hands on an RTX 3080. Had a card on back-order for six months, something like ten of them made it into Canada, then Asus cancelled the SKU. Then I ordered a newly announced Lenovo system with one in it and Lenovo cancelled the SKU before shipping any. Finally caught a miracle with Newegg having systems. Shredded the machine, added a nice waterblock, moved the parts into my (nice) case, and finally have > 60fps 4k gaming. Don

    • Getting decent graphics cards is very difficult right now, but much easier if you buy prebuilt. Unless, apparently, you order an Alienware PC.

  • Good (Score:5, Funny)

    by vertex buffer ( 6954672 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:48PM (#61632395)
    now outlaw assembling "ghost" PCs.

  • Just think of all the energy this dupe just wasted (Score:5, Funny)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:49PM (#61632403)

    Shameful. Just shameful. All the wasted bits, cpu cycles and time. All because they can't remember they posted this yesterday.

    Oh well. Wouldn't be /. without dupity dupe dupes, no?

  • Sue? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by rpnx ( 8338853 )
    Argue laptops are like printing presses of the 21st century and the government shouldn't be able to dictate how much power they consume because you should be able to use as much power as you want gaming. Games are a form of protected speech, after all. I wonder if a judge would go for this angle. Could these state bans be overturned? I'd sue them myself if I was in the market for a beefy gaming laptop and lived in one of these states, but alas I meet neither category.

    • Re:Sue? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bhcompy ( 1877290 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @09:13PM (#61632495)

      I wonder if a judge would go for this angle. Could these state bans be overturned?

      No, because this is no different than low flow toilet regulations. Urge builders to use better PSUs. The law is crafted around using 80 PLUS Gold PSUs as a baseline. Dell, in their infinite cheapness, uses garbage PSUs

      • Re:Sue? (Score:4, Informative)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:31AM (#61633353)

        Actually quite a lot of Dell PSUs only look bad, and I say "look" because they are grey and use colour coded cables rather than being black with black cables. The overwhelming majority are 80+ gold at a minimum including the Alienware Aurora R10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] which is one of the ones which isn't meeting the requirements.

        There are other requirements, mainly around power consumption, sleep modes, and poor component choices. I'd be more interested in the fact that Dell insist on designing and manufacturing their own motherboards, and those are universally incredibly shit. What's the bet that they haven't implemented the most basic of powersaving features for sleep and standby modes...

      • It might be better to sell them without PSUs. Without a PSU, it's a desk sculpture. It's perfectly efficient because it doesn't turn on. They can make a creative commons all-in-one power distribution connector so that people buying their expensive solar gaming grid free power generation fiasco need only connect one plug to distribute power to the sculpture and transform it into an interactive gaming art installation celebrating the ongoing bounty of gravitationally induced nuclear fusion happening somewher

  • Alienware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:49PM (#61632407) Homepage
    Now there is a blast from the past. Does anyone still buy that overpriced tack? I thought the EU regulations banning hoovers using more than ~800W were draconian but this takes the biscuit altogether, and in the land of the free and the brave, the home of the shiny 7-litre pickup for lads who never put anything in the tray.

    • Re:Alienware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @09:33PM (#61632557)

      the home of the shiny 7-litre pickup

      That is how democracy works.

      High-power gaming rigs are targeted because few people use them, and even fewer will change their vote over the issue.

      SUVs are not targeted because millions of soccer moms and other swing voters in the suburbs drive them and see the freedom to guzzle gas as sacrosanct.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        How democracy works. We are nerds and geeks, we fucking own the internet. We fucking tell them to change the laws or troll the fuck out of them till they do. That way works much better than just sucking it up.

        I play with computer pretending to drive high powered boat around, instead of being a dick and driving energy wasting, pollution generating, high powered boat. You ban my computer and you cheer the fucking boat.

        How much energy and pollution boat, how much energy and pollution computer. They deserve t

        • The geek lost control of the Internet in the nineties. Flat-rate AOL at $20/mo. Unmetered dial-up access available almost anywhere. Played nicely with attractive and accessible third-party clients like mIRC. The Win 95 PC goes mass market in a very big way. Amazon.com launches in 96. In 97 Microsoft introduces IE 4 on a $14.CD as part of a simplified Internet suite with a handome paperback manual. Bundles of this sort used to sell for $50-$00. In the same year the WSJ goes online as a stiffly priced but ve

      • To be fair, there have been regulations on those gas-guzzlers as well. That's why most modern SUVs are 4-cylinder turbos with like five catalytic converters. That doesn't completely invalidate your criticism—but I would argue that the suburban lifestyle causes more damage than the type of vehicles that are being driven. The suburban development pattern requires so much unnecessary and unsustainable infrastructure (asphalt, concrete) that dwarfs the emissions coming from modern vehicles. There's a reas

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by fazig ( 2909523 )
        Actually, no, High-power gaming rigs are not targeted. It's probably just Dell not wanting to play nice. I've seen JayzTwoCents video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        Ironically the more power your high end rig consumes, the less regulated it is according to the criteria that I have seen.
        For example you even get a higher "allowance" if you have a high bandwidth memory and or monitor with a higher refresh rate than 300Hz. And having a high end graphics card with >632 GB/s memory bandwidth wo

      • SUVs are not targeted because millions of soccer moms and other swing voters in the suburbs drive them and see the freedom to guzzle gas as sacrosanct.

        SUVs are not targeted because automakers have lobbied for emissions rules exceptions for light trucks... and got them. They also continue to lobby to keep them, because they are making money hand over fist building cheap-to-produce pickup trucks and stuffing them full of luxury content (without actually making luxury interiors beyond seats — those soft-touch interior materials are spendy and people will forgive a pickup for having cheap plastics in it.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Looking into the regulation, it does not appear that 'high powered gaming rigs' have been targeted at all. Dell did a crappy job of power management for when the system is not in use and THAT violated the existing rules.

      • High-power gaming rigs are targeted because few people use them, and even fewer will change their vote over the issue.

        Stop posting garbage. High power gaming rigs are not targeted, and nearly all of them on the market don't fail to meet these incredibly easy to pass requirements. The requirements are based on idle power compared to computer capability. Gaming PCs overwhelmingly have a huge power budget according to these rules when you're not Dell / Alienware and making an un-upgradable un-expandable piece of shit. In fact throwing another PCI-e 16x slot on the motherboard without plugging anything in may even make that "A

    • I thought the EU regulations banning hoovers using more than ~800W were draconian but this takes the biscuit altogether

      What takes the biscuit? Regulation forcing innovation and improvements to products that go beyond masturbating over power numbers?

      The CEC regulations are not difficult to meet for any gaming PC. You just need to not use the shittest of tier components. I for one welcome regulations which which reign in the practice of selling consumers "premium" polished turds. And just like your 7-litre pickup isn't banned you are more than capable of building a 2kW bitcoin mining, workgamingstation and selling it in Calif

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Pre-build gaming systems are fairly popular and sometimes represent decent value for money. Also now we have gaming laptops and obviously building your own isn't an option there.

      Vacuum cleaners... They saved us from ourselves. People did zero research before buying and just went with the one that had the highest wattage, became more power must mean more cleaning, right? But in fact the best performing cleaners were often the much lower power ones, like Dyson battery powered models. Turns out what you need f

      • The rise in the cost of components of gaming computers leads to the fact that normal players can no longer upgrade. It's not just expensive. This became impossible due to the fact that miners buy everything that appears in the access. I thought about it and switched to mobile internet. Many sites make slot games available on a smartphone - http://truebluecasinos.com.au/ [truebluecasinos.com.au] I'll just ignore all these wild prices and wait out the madness with online slots)

  • In related news ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:51PM (#61632413)

    ... the majority of Aurora R12 and R10 configurations consume more power than local regulations allow.

    Dell is re-marketing Aurora R12 and R10 configurations as "portable space heaters" ...

  • There's apparently several YouTubers (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:58PM (#61632431)
    We've done teardowns of Alienware PCs recently and found substandard components. Cheap ram, cheap motherboards, basically anywhere on everywhere they can cut costs. The reason that they can't ship these PCs is because they're not 80 plus gold power supplies, just required if you use a power supply over 600 watts. Never mind that Alienware has apparently been caught using power supplies that can't hit the rated wattage.

    I suspect this is just because they're having trouble sourcing components and that's not going to stop them from selling PCs. No this isn't the first time I've heard of Alienware using crummy components on expensive and supposedly high-end PCs.
    • Bingo. Better PSUs would likely solve the issue. Dell's known about this for a few years now and has done nothing to address it

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The reason that they can't ship these PCs is because they're not 80 plus gold power supplies, just required if you use a power supply over 600 watts.

      The 80 plus gold requirement has been in place since 2018.
      It was in the CEC's tier 1 requirements.

      The tier 2 requirements just came into effect July 1st of this year, and add additional requirements that any power rating of 0.9 or worse must also mandate sleep and power saving settings.

      Dell and thus their Alienware brand are taking it literally.
      HP refused to stop selling computers in those states claiming it is Microsoft in violation of the regulations for not providing any method to stop end users from dis

      • If they can't be disabled, why is dell selling other models?
        I would assume mandatory sleep mode is unconstitutional because it prevents using a laptop as a server, thus restricting how you can use it for communication purposes. Mandated defaults might be different.

        • Dell and HP are talking shit (or the AC is). There's no requirements to prevent disabling these sleep states. The issue is exclusively related to defaults, and Windows 10 in its default install meets all the sleep requirements perfectly.

    • > substandard components. Cheap ram, cheap
      > motherboards, basically anywhere on everywhere
      > they can cut costs

      Wasn't that pretty much inevitable once they were acquired by mikey dell though? Honestly, I'm surprised Alienware kit stayed as decent as it did for as long as it did. No one goes to dell for anything worth having. Their bread and butter is large enterprise outfits buying massive numbers of bottom-of-the-barrel shitboxes. And if anything ever goes wrong with one, you just pull a new on

    • The reason that they can't ship these PCs is because they're not 80 plus gold power supplies, just required if you use a power supply over 600 watts.

      False. Both these systems have 80+ gold PSUs. Look more closely at the youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      There's more to the regulation than just PSUs. I'll bet a kidney that it's due to the shithouse custom designed motherboards which aren't designed to put components properly into standby, or just generally poor choice of components all around. But the reviews have consistently found the PSUs being the only good thing in Dell systems. ... though they also find several systems where said PSUs

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A recent GamersNexus review found that the case was just a cheap generic one with some plastic trim, and that airflow was so bad it was limiting system performance. People think if they order a Ryzen 5xxx and Radeon 6xxx they will get the same performance that the benchmark reviews showed, but due to thermal throttling the Alienware machines under-perform.

      The other common one is selling DDR4 3300MHz RAM but shipping it configured to 2600MHz and voiding the warranty if you enable XMP to get the advertised sp

  • Us automakers blamed regulation (Score:3)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @08:58PM (#61632433) Homepage Journal
    Intel lost apple in part because it would not focus on power. As manufacturers expand outside the US power becomes critical. Not everyone with cash also has cheap power. Not every house in the US with a Christmas bonus is going to have income for high bills. And US states are more or less struggling with energy consumption as it is.

    • Not everyone with cash also has cheap power.

      Then they can chose more expensive upfront, but more power efficient PCs. I do not care how much power a game PC uses (as long as I do not need to run bigger wires to it), since it's not a server or a miner - I do not play games 24/7, so the savings on power would take a really long time to cover the initial expense.

      But even with, say, servers. It would be really bad for me if I could not get used servers that consume more power, but are cheap upfront.

      • Most of the limits in this regulation are on sleep modes and idle power, so you wouldn't care. They specifically call out S3 sleep, and had what I thought was a carve-out for NIC power limits for wake-on-LAN. It isn't even intended to affect semi-custom PCs like this, but Dell skimped out on enough here that their gaming machines fall into the non-expandable appliance zone.

        • In that case the only way this regulation would affect me if the manufacturers decided to only make components (probably just motherboards and power supplies) that comply with these regulations (even though they do not apply in my area, at least for now) making me pay more for a feature I do not need or care about. As long as a turned off, but plugged in PC does not overheat (I actually have an old server that can overheat when turned off, but plugged in) it probably won't affect the runtime of my main UPS

          • I think they already do. Dell's problem is that they pinch pennies by making their own components and didn't bother implementing sleep or idle modes, and minimized the expansion slots and ports that the regulations specifically add leeway for. Off the shelf ones would have met requirements, and you'd probably buy a motherboard with a bunch of PCIe slots, USB ports/headers, etc. that the regulations model for higher power use. The power supply requirement is just 80+gold, which is what everyone gets these da

            • The power supply requirement is just 80+gold, which is what everyone gets these days anyway.

              The cheapest ones probably are not, though they all are active PFC (something that I do not like and would rather have a PSU without it).

    • Even the most power hungry CPU will pass these legislations if you don't put them in absolutely garbage tier computers. The issue here is that the regulation takes into account what gaming PCs are and what they do. You know things like many PCI-e slots, lots of SATA connectors, NVMe connectors, USB ports, RAM, etc. It assigns a power budget to them.

      So if you're Alienware and you grab a high end CPU, a high end GPU, a barely passable PSU, and stick it into a motherboard with zero expandability an don't even

  • Again? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @09:00PM (#61632441) Homepage

    We already knew [slashdot.org] Dell was not shipping these configurations to some states -- now we find out that Dell are still not shipping the same configurations to the same states!

    This is my shocked face.

  • deja vu all over again.

  • Dell pc's are garbage.

    Nothing of value was lost.

  • A number of misleading facts about the regulations (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sivinus ( 6011824 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @10:07PM (#61632637)

    I haven't gone through a lot of the regulations myself (and apparently some of the "official" websites aren't maintained that well), but it sounds like the restrictions might have to do with the amount of power consumed during sleep states and a higher limit is allowed for more "expandable" computers with more slots and larger power supplies, with a total exemption for computers over a certain expandability score or exceed a certain power supply wattage and discrete GPU or integrated GPU + RAM bandwidth. The expandability score seems to be calculated based on a lot of little details, such as the number of USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 ports, Ethernet, number of PCIe slots etc. From the snippets I was able to find I'm wondering if this is more geared towards offices with tons of low-powered PCs that just sit idle without actually sleeping, or something similar.

    I think Dell has had a reputation of having potentially less-expandable components and weaker-than-average power supplies, and many of their pre-order combinations don't meet the requirements. I'm also not sure if their online portal would have the intelligence to recognize if customizing a PC (i.e. upgrading the power supply) would put it over the threshold. I imagine a number of these manufacturers might in the future might add just enough PSU efficiency/wattage or extra ports etc. to push them over the allowed limit.

    • Re:A number of misleading facts about the regulati (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:45AM (#61633369)

      From the snippets I was able to find I'm wondering if this is more geared towards offices with tons of low-powered PCs that just sit idle without actually sleeping, or something similar.

      You are dead on the money. These regulations are focused on bulk vendors not shipping inefficient systems or default configurations which prevent proper sleeping. Something as simple as the display not being configured to turn off after 15min and a PC not being configured to sleep after 30min as a default out of the box setting will cause this to fail. The most onerous of the requirements is the requirement of 80+ gold PSU, but honestly anyone not producing this as a minimum should be ashamed of themselves. Dell's PSUs are actually okay but their component choices and system configuration ultimately is what lets them down.

      Additionally worth noting is that if you're not a bulk vendor like Dell then the power consumption requirements don't apply. All you need to do to meet those if you're a small volume computer store is to ship an 80+ Gold PSU, and have the sleep settings configured correctly (which incidentally means, install Windows 10 and leave the settings on default).

      This isn't rocket surgery, and while the requirements for power consumption in the legislation look incredibly complicated, an intern could whip that into a spreadsheet in a couple of days and that's the end of that.

  • My 2019 HP Omen doesn't meet Washington regulations.

  • I recommend locating it in Texas.

    • I recommend not buying fucking garbage and if you want a gaming PC actually buying a gaming PC since anything that someone would find acceptable as a gaming PC would pass these rules with power budget to spare.

      • I'm sure the law wasn't aimed at Alienware PCs alone but also affects real gaming PCs.

        • The law was aimed at everything from your lightbulb, to the toilet. Specifically if you read the rules you can see they are very clearly aimed at office PCs. Also if you read the rule you'd see that "real gaming PCs" have no problem for many reasons:
          a) Most companies producing real gaming PCs don't have the volume to be affected by the rules, most system integrators and any smaller shops thus are exempt from every part of the legislation except for using an 80+ gold PSU and setting the default power configu

  • Doesn't that list of states look a bit like states with bandwidth issues due to congestion and/or underserved areas?

    People who don't choose where they live based on their latency and fps are just plain weird.
  • You dorks demanded this kind of government regulation on how much power your computer is allowed to consume all while shaming the states that said "fuck that shit" The comments that suggest you just build your own and circumvent this stupid fucking law are gold GOLD I SAY!

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