- Stop, stop, stop, stop.
The big scary regulation boogeyman is coming to take away
your gaming PC but only under very specific circumstances.
In fact, everything on this table from the compact
Intel beast Canyon NUC to this gaming PC from EK
which is probably compliant, which raises the question,
if an RTX 3090 equipped monster like this limbos
under the California Energy Commission bar,
why does the bar even exist?
And how did Dell manage to bonk it?
Well, to find out, we gathered these parts right here
from our warehouse, with the goal of building a gaming PC
that couldn't be shipped to any of the six states
that are biding by the CEC's Title 20 standards.
And it's all fun and games for me since I'm safely
up in Canada where we don't have to deal
with any of the restrictions that wait,
oh, they apply in BC too.
More like Cantda, am I right?
Well, let's get down to business
and figure out what the heck is going on here.
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(bright upbeat music)
Step one of building the PC equivalent of a 1960s muscle car
is grabbing the most power hungry components possible.
I'm gonna be using the 11th gen core i9-11900K.
According to this review by a AnandTech,
Intel's final 14 nanometer flagship has only
2/3 as many cores as AMD's price competitive 5900X
while being capable of drawing twice as much power
under peak load.
This thing must not be allowed, right?
- [Colin] Nope, it's all good.
- Oh, well, yeah, believe it or not the CEC
and every other entity following its guidelines,
just don't care how much power your CPU draws under load.
Their primary concern is how much power is being wasted
by machines that are sitting at idle.
So we should be able to use any modern CPU we want
as long as their motherboard is configured to allow
deep enough sleep states.
And our operating system is configured to activate them
within 30 minutes.
As for RAM, I have chosen 64 gigabytes of,
oh, I have chosen 64 gigabytes of wasteful RGB lights.
Believe it or not, these don't make your computer go faster.
Surely California hates these, right?
(buzzer buzzing)
Yeah, actually the only situation where your system memory
could put you in non-compliance
would be if you had less than eight gigabytes of it.
So go ham on your big chunkiest memory kits.
Just make sure you don't go overboard on your motherboard.
This guy right here, it's compliant.
But what happens if I was to have the partiest motherboard
you could possibly imagine.
This thing can't be compliant, is it?
- [Colin] It's even more compliance.
- It's more compliant, all right.
Although this thing is a monster and has like six
CPU power connectors and two 24 pins,
it still is totally fine.
The thing is that the expandability score
is what actually matters.
So things like memory slots, expansion cards,
and even back panel ports,
the higher expandability score or ES.
In brief, every PC is given a power draw allowance
based on the score and it almost makes sense.
A hard drive gets more power allowance than an SSD
for example because it takes more power to spin up a disk.
Most importantly though, if that expandability score
passes 690, nice, then you're exempt
from the typical energy consumption standards, almost.
You will still need to pass the performance bar
for the energy efficient ethernet but that's another story
for another time.
The bottom line is that even things like liquid cooling
contribute to this score.
So any PC with premium gaming motherboards like this one
or this monster, well, it increases the power allowance.
So knowing that, I guess this giant fan triple AIO cooler
helps me.
So yeah, don't press the buzzer, this thing is fine
but surely, this RTX 3090 isn't compliant.
Like, it can draw over 400 Watts peak by itself alone
and Nvidia recommends 1000 Watt power supply.
So any mortal that dares to--
- [Colin] No, it's good. - Yeah, yeah, it's fine.
There's another way to get around the regulations
by combining a powerful GPU, so that's a card
with over 600 gigabytes per second of bandwidth
with a power supply of over 600 Watts,
regardless of the efficiency, and the PC falls
into the air quotes, high expandability computer bracket
and is exempt from regulation.
Even this 1600 Watt monster, oh yeah, it's totally fine.
And this 1000 Watt piece of (beep) I mean, come on,
it weighs absolutely nothing.
It's also totally fine.
Even though it shouldn't be for wildfire hazard reasons.
But these guys right here, no dice.
That's where the efficiency part really comes into effect.
80 PLUS is a body that certifies power supplies
for their efficiency and the Gold tier just so happens
to align perfectly with the minimum efficiency requirements
for Title 20.
80 PLUS is just a brand name of sorts,
so you can have a power supply that passes without acquiring
the stamp but it does need to hit that gold target
unless it's over 600 Watts and paired with a chunker GPU
and that's for a good reason.
Up until recently, Bronze rated power supplies
were considered Ds but nowadays Bronze is pretty low tier
with Gold, Platinum and Titanium efficiencies
all being more affordable to boot.
Well, these Bronze guys may be more wallet friendly
in the short term, both you and your local power grid
will pay the price in power
and electrical overhead respectively.
But it also just doesn't really matter
because you're probably building your own PC anyway.
Fortunately, DIY builds don't need to follow Title 20 rules.
So who does this apply to?
Only medium to large manufacturers
in these six states right here.
If you're outside of those states, don't worry for now.
If you are in those states, well,
you still probably don't need to worry.
If you build your own PCs, you're fine.
If you're buying a PC made from parts from a small business,
you're also probably fine.
Title 20 is squarely aimed at mid to high volume producers.
So like Dell Alienware, HP, Lenovo,
the kind of brands that pump out hundreds
if not thousands of systems.
System integrators like Origin PCs, CyberPower
and Maingear will feel the effects
but because they're doing bespoke builds
rather than hundreds of the same PC,
they should be able to work within the guidelines just fine
as long as they follow the rules.
How about an example?
This is Luke's old PC and in it we have a Corsair TX750M,
a Gold rate at 750 Watt power supply, that's good.
It's above the 600 Watt minimum required
to be called a high expandability PC.
But because of GPU here is a measly GTX 950,
it now needs to be certified before it can be sold
by someone like Dell Alienware.
Same for Alienware's Aurora lineup.
This one does support the 1000 Watt power supply option
which apparently is Gold rated
according to some Dell help forum posts.
It does not meet the threshold for exemption
because the RTX 2080 Super
clocks in at 496 gigabytes per second of bandwidth.
For this to be sold, it would need to be tested
by a third party and marketed as such and that's expensive.
Dell confirmed with us that future R10 and R12 models
would meet or exceed Title 20 guidelines
but that doesn't really answer why they didn't get this
certified in the first place
because they definitely knew it was coming.
And Dell isn't alone here, any medium to large PC builders
will need to build and certify their machines
under Title 20 if they plan to do any business
in the world's 5th largest economy,
lying somewhere between Germany and the U.K. in size
or any add-on states.
Macro View Title 20 declares the minimum efficiency levels
for energy and water consumption in products.
Everything from light bulbs to plumbing.
But what we're particularly concerned with
is article four of the standard, appliances,
which categorizes PCs into a handful of groups think laptop,
desktop, workstation, and then further defines the allowable
idle power consumption of each device
with this rather complex formula.
The reason all of this is even a thing
is very straightforward.
As PCs keep getting more powerful and power hungry,
if you extrapolate that a bit to somewhere near 2040,
the sheer volume of power required for computation
will surpass the global power output.
Yeah, seriously, in less than 20 years,
there'll be more computing than there is power
to run computers.
And that's not even taking into account the rapid automotive
electrification but that's a whole different ball of worms.
And that is why California is pushing
for these tighter controls,
not just to reduce their emissions
from power generation but also reduce
the infrastructure costs of up-scaling
and moving that power around.
If you can nip the downstream power demand in the bud,
your existing infrastructure can go longer
before upgrades are needed.
Computers alone account for roughly 3% of residential
and 7% of commercial energy use in California.
That is no small amount of power.
Title 20 is estimated to save
more than 2.3 billion kilowatt-hours of energy.
That's the equivalent of the entire
city of San Francisco yearly.
There will be some trickle down costs to the consumer
of course, as third-party certification isn't free.
And with 80 PLUS Bronze and Silver
no longer being an option, the cost of an 80 PLUS Gold
or higher power supply will have to come from somewhere
and you will be footing the bill for that.
But again, if you still want a Bronze power supply,
you can just build your own computer.
We've got a whole host of PC build guides
you can work off of and just jump right in.
Globally, there's an energy revolution taking place,
whether it be through electric vehicles, renewable energy
or increased computerization of our daily lives.
When the chip shortage does end, hopefully half soon,
the problem of sheer power consumption, generation
and distribution is dead ahead.
If we play our cards right today,
hopefully we'll be able to power all of the chips tomorrow.
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- It just says, throw it a tech cookie.
Actually let's put them to the tech video,
those things are horribly inefficient, it's hilarious.
Bye.