Little by little governments are implementing measures with which to take care of the environment . Prohibition of circulation of polluting vehicles in the city center, bonuses to buyers of electric vehicles or, for example, prohibiting the sale of equipment with too much energy consumption. However, what we could never think is that this type of measure would prohibit the sale of a gaming computer, to be exact the Aurora R10 and Aurora E12 from Alienware.
A very powerful PC
We have already seen that the most powerful graphics on the market are true beasts of energy consumption . Its high computing power has even been used for Bitcoin mining , so it is easy to think that this type of measure seeks to control the excessive consumption of dedicated mining equipment, although the subject is not at all clear at the moment.
What is clear is that right now users residing in California who are interested in an Alienware Aurora R10 or an Aurora R12 will not be able to buy it because they are affected by the regulation of energy consumption. According to the message that can be read on the web, “this product cannot be shipped to the states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or Washington due to the energy consumption regulations adopted by those states.” This law was updated and its second level came into effect on July 1, affecting all equipment manufactured after July 1, 2021.
According to the technical specifications, these devices consume a total of 63 kWh per year at idle , while they reach 563 kWh per year at maximum performance , a figure that far exceeds the figure of the 70 kWh that the devices can consume a year at maximum manufactured after July 1 (100 kWh if manufactured between January 1, 2019 and July 1, 2021). A tremendous problem that at first glance seems to have a difficult solution, since the technical characteristics of the equipment reveal a whole monster of energy consumption: Intel Core i7 11700KF (expandable to Core i9) and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (expandable to RTX 3090 ).
What is the solution?
Like almost all modern laws, the adaptation and implementation period is usually complex, and for now there are many doubts about it. Neither Dell nor the California Energy Commission has clarified the matter to Motherboard, so the matter remains a mystery.
In any case, the important thing is that, even though it is a very important law that tries to take care of the environment and the excessive consumption of energy, it will be necessary to see if these measures also reach other markets, and that it could set a precedent that defines the development of some internal PC components and devices.
Powerful, low-power graphics? It is something that we would love to see but we have a lot that will not happen for a very long time. Meanwhile we will have to be vigilant to see how the application of this law evolves, which sooner or later could affect many other manufacturers.
