Dell Can't Sell Some Alienware Gaming PCs in 6 US States Anymore

If you live in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington and want to purchase a new gaming rig from Dell, your options are now more limited than if you lived in any other state.

As PC Gamer reports, some of Dell's Alienware Aurora R12 and Aurora R10 gaming PCs can no longer be legally sold in those six states mentioned above. It's because they consume too much power to meet local regulations.

For example, anyone living in those states and attempting to purchase the Alienware Aurora R12 Gaming Desktop, even in its Core i5, GeForce GTX 1650 configuration, will be met with the message, "This product cannot be shipped to the states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington due to power consumption regulations adopted by those states. Any orders placed that are bound for those states will be canceled."

Having to limit the performance of your new gaming rig simply because of your location is sure to surprise and frustrate anyone seeing that message pop up. It's also very frustrating for Dell, which is potentially losing out from consumers not able to purchase its $2,000+ PCs.

Dell has explained the situation in a statement to The Register, with a spokesperson saying, "Yes, this was driven by the California Energy Commission (CEC) Tier 2 implementation that defined a mandatory energy efficiency standard for PCs – including desktops, AIOs and mobile gaming systems. This was put into effect on July 1, 2021. Select configurations of the Alienware Aurora R10 and R12 were the only impacted systems across Dell and Alienware."

Other PC suppliers will be forced to comply with the same power consumption regulations as Dell for those states, suggesting that the only real way around the power limits is to build your own gaming rig. Longer term, it seems likely PC manufacturers will end up tweaking the components used specifically for those states in order to meet the regulations.

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