Asus, Gigabyte To Replace All Sandy Bridge Boards 180
J. Dzhugashvili writes "In the wake of Intel's announcement that all existing Sandy Bridge chipsets have a bug that causes degraded Serial ATA performance, top-tier motherboard makers Asus and Gigabyte have made public statements regarding their return policy for affected boards. Asus is promising 'hassle-free return and/or replacement', while Gigabyte says owners of affected boards are entitled to a full refund or replacement—and it recommends that users seek refunds. Both companies are advising users to contact the original place of purchase to proceed. On a related note, Gigabyte has announced that new Sandy Bridge motherboards with bug-free chipsets will be available in volume in April."
More tech detail (Score:5, Informative)
For the chipheads, Anandtech has a good description of the underlying problem:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug [anandtech.com]
Intel is eating the cost (Score:2, Informative)
The mobo manufacturers don't really care. Intel has done this recall and is eating all the costs related to this problem. So if someone sends back a mobo, the company just sends the bill to Intel and gets their money.
For people that wish to keep their boards and just get a SATA controller (or for who use 1 or 2 ports since the 6gbps ports aren't affected) they can simply do so.
What About Intel's Own Motherboards? (Score:2, Informative)
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info: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
info: You are now chatting with 'Diego'
Diego: Hello. Thank you for using the Intel Customer Support chat service. We are glad to be of service. How can I help you today?
_____@yahoo.com: Hi. I've read about your recent chipset issue. I just purchased and received a DP67BA motherboard. Is there a process to have it replaced with a corrected chipset?
Diego: In this situation, each place of purchase will be in charge of either replacing the motherboard.
Diego: Since the issue is very recent, there are no replacement units with the fix. Bear in mind this issue impacts all Intel® 6 Series Express Chipsets and Intel® Xeon® C200 Series chipsets on systems using SATA ports 2-5, if using ports 0-1, customers are not affected. Using ports 2-5 may impact functional issue rates over time, this is not impacted immediately.
_____@yahoo.com: So, I need to contact the sales vendor regarding this issue, even though it's an Intel motherboard?
Diego: The issue is being under investigation by Intel and we are working as fast as possible concerning this
Diego: Please be aware that in some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives. Systems with only SATA ports 0 and 1 enabled are not susceptible to these functional issues.
Diego: It is not a problem that will be present in a short time
_____@yahoo.com: Yes. I understand. This is a part I bought for a personal computer. I don't have a lot of money. I need the part to last properly for a long time.
_____@yahoo.com: Are you telling me that I have to contact the sales vendor regarding this? I bought an Intel brand motherboard because I thought I would receive good support.
Diego: You may check with the place of purchase in case you would like to replace the motherboard in the future when a hardware fix is available on a new revision. We are working together with our chain or Authorized Distributors and resellers to cover this problem
_____@yahoo.com: Okay then. I will forward this conversation to my sales vendor and see what they say about it. Thanks.
Diego: You are welcome
Diego: Is there something else I would be able to assist you with?
_____@yahoo.com: No. Goodbye.
Cougar Point, not Sandy Bridge (Score:5, Informative)
Cougar Point is a chipset (the set of circuits that normally come in a motherboard, separate from the CPU). Sandy Bridge is a family of processors. The announced problem is with the former, not the latter. A lot of tech news outlets are spreading the misinformation and causing quite a mess.
Re:I'll take one! (Score:2, Informative)
You have to have tight control of the rework temperatures and times, or you get intermetallic growth which hurts reliability. We verify all of our solder stations every eight hours using a calibrated thermocouple just to be safe. But yes, reworked solder joints can be very reliable.
We make the electronics that go into certain very valuable aircraft. We do low-volume, high-mix production, with batch sizes as low as one board. Since it's hard to work out the kinks in a production process until you've built a few hundred or thousand boards, our units generally have as many as 14 defects on EACH UNIT. Most of those just need a quick touchup with a soldering iron, but we often have to replace ball-grid-array and pin-grid-array processors. The reworked units then go into production aircraft, and (knock on wood) function reliably for decades.
Posting as AC for obvious reasons.