If you are planning to get a high-end PC and you are living in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, or Vermont, you'd better hold on for now as new energy has gone into effect in these states, which results in high-end gaming PCs getting banned.

Well, this isn't the best piece of news to start your day with, but it's happening. Earlier today, Dell updated its own online shop for Alienware gaming desktops with a new disclaimer for US visitors.

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The disclaimer simply says that the company is not able to ship the high-tier models of Aurora gaming desktops to California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Vermont due to power consumption regulations adopted by those states.

With the disclaimer appearing on Amazon as well, people started to search around the new regulations which led them to an energy bill that was planned in 2016 and went into effect recently.

Are High-End Gaming PCs Really Banned?

Going over the bill with all the formal and law-related words and descriptions might be boring, but there are two major points that we need to talk about here.

First, the bill is targeting the power consumption of PCs in idle/inactive mode, such as when you put your PC on sleep or hibernate mode.

Second, the bill uses Expandability Score (ES) as a means to measure the power of your PC and then decide whether it's a high-end gaming PC or not. Below, you can have a look at the table of Expandability Score, which we found from JayzTwoCents' video on YouTube.

Expandibility Score

If your PC's ES is above 690, then you have a high expandable gaming PC and it doesn't need to meet the standards of the energy bill. But when it comes to gaming desktops with a low level of expandability, they need to meet the requirements of the bill in the case of power consumption, or they are banned.

What this simply means is that you can still get your PC parts separately and build yourself a high-end gaming PC. However, you will probably not be able to purchase an all-in-one desktop such as Dell's Alienware if they have a high power consumption.