Over the past week, several users on social media started noticing Dell was no longer shipping high-end PCs to many US states. However, anyone playing their favorite games on PC can rest easy - the government is not coming after the PC master race.

As if finding a new graphics card for a decent price wasn’t hard enough, news of a supposed ban started circulating due to Dell’s website stating that certain products are not being sold to customers in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington. According to Dell, these couldn't be sold due to power efficiency regulations put in place by those states. However, upon further investigation, many are now understanding that these measures are not nearly as bad they seemed at first, and definitely now new at all.

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Aside from the wave of overblown Twitter claims, the story began to circulate on several news outlets. Yet tech YouTuber JayzTwoCents dissected this piece of regulation only to find out the California Energy Commission’s (CEC) only covers a tiny bit of the PC gaming world. As it turns out, the "Appliance Efficiency Regulations - Title 20" dates back to 2016 when California (soon followed by the other states) set in motion a plan to slowly improve the power efficiency and consumption ratings on PCs while they’re sitting idle. In other words, not when trying out Destiny 2 builds at a super-high frame rate.

Although the actual piece of regulation is quite a long read, the best way to sum it up is that anyone who is building their own desktop computer won’t have anything to worry about, as none of this is applicable to them or parts shipped and sold in those state. Therefore, only prebuilt manufacturers like Origin, HP, Corsair, and Dell with its Alienware brand will have to adapt to it by getting the products certified for sale in certain states. The keyword here is "adapt", as companies have known for five years that starting July 1, 2021, they would have to have these parts certified.

Dell not shipping gaming PC due to ban
Dell website not shipping Alienware

As you can see on the Dell storefront, the Alienware PC "complies with CEC power consumption regulations", and can therefore be shipped to all states. It is just a matter of the manufacturer gaining approval.

The original 2015 study that led to these rules claims that high-end PC usage, and gaming as a whole, adds up to roughly 20% of California’s residential power usage. Despite this, the truth is that power-hungry gaming consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X, as well as most computers, will be mostly unaffected by this regulation, as long as the parts used to build them are certified with the state. At the heart of it, forbidding the sale of certain prebuilt desktops is only a tiny drop in the energy efficiency budget that could even prompt PC system integrators to use even more efficient hardware.

In any case, even though no other company besides Dell has put forward similar CEC-enforced measures, this mild inconvenience for residents of the affected states makes a very compelling case for anyone to finally build a gaming PC in 2021, or maybe even go for a new gaming laptop.

Source: The Register

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