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]
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Very good article.
I wonder if the wisest thing would be to just sit on one of those board till April, especially if your board is not yet experiencing the slow down. The article linked above suggests this problem gets worse with age.
But with replacement boards due in April I would opt for waiting. Of course some people can't/won't change out their own boards and warranty issues might not allow them to do so, but sending it back now gets you a refund, but you are still stuck without your computer.
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if its a phase lock loop drift, you WILL get errors. its not about 'if'.
just replace it. this is a 'bad clock' essentially.
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But it isn't. It's about a fet with a too thin insulator layer such that it's leakage current slowly but steadily grows. Eventually it causes increasing problems with the PLL, first resulting in a slowdown, then failure. It's not likely to reach significance between now and April.
That is what is being recommended (Score:3)
Newegg has a video out talking about it and they run down how you can still use the board, if you only have two devices just use the first couple ports and so on. Basically you can hold on to your board till the new ones come, then get a replacement.
The refund policy seems to just be to keep people happy. Some people look for any excuse to flip their lid and will do it over something like this and demand a refund. Intel headed all that off and told all suppliers to offer refunds, no questions asked, and Int
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There is so much going on with motherboards anymore, and there must be 1000+ motherboard variations in each generation. It's amazing that things like clock timings don't affect other portions of the board more frequently. Crazy.
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Things like this do happen more frequently than widely reported, it's just that some people are better at covering it up.
I used to repair computers for a living so I saw the same faults over and over again. There are three examples in the last decade I can think of.
The capacitor plague which resulted in the majority of mobos produced between about 2000-2005 dying after some time was largely unreported. It was down to a bad mix of chemicals that caused them to expand and leak after a while, resulting in inst
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sometimes called re-balling
Reballing is more than just reflowing the solder, it is the complete removal of the chip, replacement of the solder balls and resoldering of the chip. Reballing is likely to be a much longer term fix than attempting to reflow the existing solder, especially if done with leaded solder but it's also far more effort.
I wonder if that's the whole story (Score:2)
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You are not serious about covering the 3Gbps ports over with duct tape and selling them as cheaper models, are you? Seriously?
Also, why would Intel be worried about other parts of the chip? They specifically identified the failure down to the actual component, a transistor, that is part of the 3Gbps circuit and does not exist in the 6Gbps circuit. The transistor fails over time because too high a voltage is driving it. It's a simple mistake caused by circuit re-use from an older design that nobody caught. P
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I didn't understand what the article said about just turning off the voltage to the transistor at issue to fix the problem.
How is letting the transistor fail different from disabling it by turning off the voltage to it?
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The transistor is embedded in the Northbridge somewhere - there's no physical way to turn it off without replacing the chip. They state in the article that it's as simple as turning it off - and I've seen others tripped up by this (in comments on the site) but replacement is still required.
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OK, but I still don't understand why it would solve the problem even if it were possible. If you turn it off, you lose that SATA port. If it fails, you lose that SATA port. What's the difference? The fact that you know what the problem is in the former case, but not in the latter, so you can choose a different port?
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According to the Anandtech article the transistor in question is in the Phase Locked Loop (PLL) circuitry for the four SATA2 3Gbps controllers. When it dies due to overvoltage and heat it takes all four SATA channels with it since it cripples the PLL which provides the clocks for the SATA controller. The SATA3 6Gbps controller has its own PLL and so its clocking system is not affected.
To add to the confusion that particular section of PLL is apparently redundant, part of an older mask revision that didn't
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It fails shorted. Presumably it eventually pulls the voltage down enough to cause other problems.
I'll take one! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not inconceivable that they will disable those ports, perhaps with software and epoxy, and sell them again to some other market...
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Well Intel is footing the bill for replacements so it's better all around if they just offer a trade-in.
Re:I'll take one! (Score:5, Insightful)
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are you sure?
it seems quite uneconomical to repair boards like this that cost in the $100 range.
a multi thousand dollar cisco router board, yes, you'd rework that.
a $100 commodity mobo? I doubt it. not only do you have to unsolder the chip, clean the board and resolder it but you have to fully test it again, too. does that seem worthwhile to you, for a $100 board? I don't know their success rate but I could see a number of the reworked boards failing for this or other reasons and so its a double loss.
wh
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First, you don't scrap a $100 motherboard over the labor cost of removing and replacing one component (which Intel is providing for free). I'll cost at most $10 to replace the chipset, probably less than $5. Add another $5-$10 for testing and packaging, and for under $20 cost to the manufacturer you have motherboard that you can sell for a whole lot more than $20.
Second, these boards typically start upwards of $100 and go up to $300
Third, at the very least, they'll cut the traces going to the 3Gb SATA ports
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Labor. Obviously time is worth nothing to you. Stop wasting ours. Cost of the repairs will also include shipping, handling, accounting ..... you know ... overhead.
Grind the stuff up, and recycle.
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I don't know - if you've got, say, a million boards in the pipeline and you can fix them for $20 each then sell them for $60, it seems like there would be some money to be made.
"Fix for $20" might seem unreasonable, but I don't think so, based on the economies of scale available to Asus and Gigabyte. They already have 100% of the requisite QA/QC ability, and access to cheap labour. I'm sure Intel will give them the chips for free.
That said, the other poster's idea is more likely IMHO - re-badge the boards,
Re:I'll take one! (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps, but many of these are not $100 motherboards. High-end P67 boards run in the $200-300 range.
This also would not be a small scale refurb operation -- thousands of identical boards could be processed in an assembly-line fashion making this much more cost-effective than a single worker refurbishing whatever came in the mail that day.
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Generally the only stuff that is through hole these days is stuff that needs to be mechanically sturdy and has relatively few pins, connectors, large electrolytic capacitors etc.
The vast majority of capacitors on a modern board will be surface mount, it's just those huge electrolytics in the power circuits that aren't.
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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 buil
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It's probably bga, meaning surface mounted under the chip. They can just cook the old chip since it's scrap, but they'll have to very carefully clean the pads and then solder the new chip on in an oven.
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The technology exists, but what does it cost? Motherboards are typically very low margin. Of course, these are high-end, higher margin boards. But in the end, you have to look at the cost of: receiving, handling to stage in to rework, doing the actual rework with sophisticated tools and well trained operators, QA and burn-in, and packaging. And you have to do all that and resell the board at a price such that the reworked board has equal margin to a newly manufactured board, or it simply doesn't make ec
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Do Gigabyte and Asus err... Foxconn, Pegatron, Quanta, et al. own enough equipment to do the desoldering, cleaning, soldering, and X-ray inspections necessary to do this work at a reasonable rate? I doubt that the actual board manufacturers like Foxconn do very much desoldering and other types of rework on a large scale in their normal manufacturing operations. Next, if the manufacturers must look outside their companies, is there enough equipment out there up to the task of reworking these boards at a re
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.
Re:I'll take one! (Score:4)
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No thanks. I'd take the replacement in April.
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Considering that AMD's Bulldozer is coming out in May (most likely), it might make more sense, if you haven't already bought Sandy Bridge, to wait and see how AMD's chips stack up.
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Could be a fake, but I wouldn't be surprised given the PassMark numbers for the i7-950 (6346 @ $286), the Phenom II x6 1100T (6174 @ $260), and the i7-980X (10472 @ $1000)
AMD is moving to the same process size that Intel has been enjoying, and a smaller process size usually means large performance increments (just as it di
Well two problems (Score:2)
First you are comparing the bulldozer to a 950. That is a 45nm Nehlam chip. Well and good, but that is not the same thing as a 32nm Sandy Bridge chip. They are faster per clock than Nehlam chips, and that is without considering things using their new AVX extensions (how much that matters remains to be seen). Also they scale better speed wise. A 950 is 3.06Ghz, a 2600 (roughly same price) is 3.4Ghz and has a higher turbo speed.
Second you have to consider that throwing more cores at a problem doesn't do a lot
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First you are comparing the bulldozer to a 950.
No, I compared it with a i7-950, a Phenom II 1100T, and a i7-980X. Actually.. I only compared it with an i7-980X.. the rumors compared it to the others. Did you not read my post, or did you intentionally ignore what you read?
Well and good, but that is not the same thing as a 32nm Sandy Bridge chip [snip] a 2600 (roughly same price) is 3.4Ghz and has a higher turbo speed.
Nobody said it was, but I also mentioned the Sandy's. Did you not read my post, or did you intentionally ignore what you read?
The 2600 is a Sandy in the 9000+ PassMark category... oh.. exactly where the Bulldozer rumors put Bulldozer..Why would I talk about price on similarly perfor
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Some people will not want that solution and others will shout about Intel trying to cheap out. With this many products it is just simpler to deal with one solution for everyone. Hey if you don't want to send it in I doubt that they will send the motherboard police to your home and make you.
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amd is much better at pci-e (Score:3)
Intels chips have limited pci-e lanes and you need to go to the high end i7 cpus just to get more then 20+DMI bus speed of 4 pcie lanes. For Sandy Bridge that may be a $400 cpu! + a high cost MB.
AMD lets you USE ANY CPU in a AM3 board with chip set choice with better pci-e lane setups. 890FX has 38 + 4 SB link. 890GX and other 800's 22 + 4 SB link.
790fx has 38 + 4 SB link lanes. 790X and 790GX has 22 + 4 SB link. 785G 20 + 4 SB link. 785E 22 + 4 SB link and most of the other 700 ones have the same.
Does that matter? (Score:2)
I think people get a little over focused on the PCIe lanes thing. Remember that more lanes drives up the cost. So you have to ask yourself is it useful? Do you need a tons of PCIe lanes? The answer turns out to be no. HardODCP did a test (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/23/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x8x8/3) and it turns out that to even see any difference at all you need to crank up to 5760x1200 to see a difference. Even then it is what they call a "benchmarkable" difference meaning it
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You will need to make some sort of citations for such an outrageous claim. As someone who tends to go back and forth between the two I have never seen said issues happen more to one than the other. With the exception of intel p4 boards, which burned up northbridges like crazy, but those boards also had bad caps and I imagine that was the real cause.
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Intel is coming out with yet another socket so soon?
Holy hell, no wonder I don't buy them that often.
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there are an additional 8 PCIe lanes in the P67 chipset which is plenty to deal w/ any Sata cards, etc.
Which sounds like a lot and it would be if intel was including all the stuff a typical board has in the chipset.
But once the motherboard manufacturer adds on USB3, eSATA, extra SATA 6G, firewire, PCI etc there aren't many PCIe lanes left for cards. . For example on the ASUS P8P67 pro if you want to use an x4 card at full bandwidth you lose the front USB3, the esata and both of your two x1 slots. Some manuf
Asus didn't handle the capacitor plague so well (Score:3)
Nobody did, that I know of.
An Asus motherboard I bought many years ago worked fine for about 4 years, then over a period of 2 weeks started spontaneously rebooting or locking up at ever shorter intervals until the computer was unusable. (As I recall, it was a P4S333. I put a 1.7 MHz Pentium 4 in it.) I saw some capacitors had leaked on the motherboard.
Thought I'd see what Asus had to say about it, perhaps offer a replacement or upgrade at a prorated discount, or something. They told me to get lost.
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Yup.
Fix the early returns as replacements for the later ones. Warranty repairs do not need to be new parts, just warranted parts.
But De-soldering is a messy task unless they set up a custom jig for each board type.
After you take out all the pluggable memory, CPUs, and video controllers, what is left is not that expensive. It might be less expensive to trash the board, file a claim with Intel and make new board.
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Building new motherboards is a messy task unless they set up a custom assembly line for each board type, and you think a "custom jig" to rework these tainted boards is a showstopper? Hah.
Thanks for posting!
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These boards will be produced for long period of time
So the 5 seconds between Intel's current socket and Intel's new, 100% incompatible, exactly-the-same socket is a "long period of time" now?
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Afaict it was just over 2 years from the release of the first LGA1156 processors to the release of the first LGA1155 processors.
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What kind of chip is it?
You have fun desoldering a BGA in the middle of a bunch of other SMD/SMT components.
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What kind of chip is it? ;). It's the only way for chips with this many connections.
Some sort of BGA with a huge number of balls
You have fun desoldering a BGA in the middle of a bunch of other SMD/SMT components.
Preheat the board to 150C or so to reduce the the temperature gradiants. Then heat the chip you want to remove with hot air and lift it off, doesn't seem a big deal to me. Especially as if they are doing it en-masse they will almost certainly build special jigs to apply just the right ammount of hea
Intel is getting ahead of this one (Score:2)
You will read of the details of this elsewhere, but I 'know a guy' at Intel, and this was slam-dunk gotta-fix-this for them, despite the cost. It was evident from the beginning that this had the makings of a legendary fail for them, and they bit off the $1B and just fixed it.
I'm hoping to get some tidbits on the actual cause, but for now it's pretty tight over there.
Not often that Intel makes these mistakes, and this is one they seem to be handling with integrity. Not like Nvidia [cnet.com].
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Quote from AnandTech Story [anandtech.com]
Intel maintains that Sandy Bridge CPUs are not affected, and current users are highly unlikely to encounter the issue even under heavy loads. So far Intel has only been able to document the issue after running extended testing at high temperatures (in a thermal chamber) and voltages.
So, no, it wasn't evident from the beginning. They had to devise torture tests to even see it.
See Anandtech (above) for the desired tidbits you were hoping for.
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Actually, Intel got returns back from their customers (Dell, for one), and as soon as they analyzed the chipsets, they found the materials problem. The 'torture tests' were in response to the defective parts and the failure mode. That 'only' gets them to choosing the next step, is it hardware or firmware? Assuming,of course, that it is a defect, and not something else. My friend in driver development spends a fair amount of his time proving that the error is not his code. Less than a while ago, since h
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Intel so far has publically stated that this problem wasn't detected in their testing. I kinda believe that, and the root cause makes sense of that. The chip wasn't slipped in after the LAST round of tests, so the assumptions that Intel didn't test this design adequately will probably prove false. I haven't heard any credible report that Intel had any suspicion that this problem existed, or could, before shipment. Changed seppings may not have spotted it, for as you pint out, this needed extreme testing
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OK, I haven't worked at Intel in nearly 10 years, but I did work there for 11 years, and can clearly envision how this went down, since similar things happened on my watch. Key customers always get early units while Intel is still completing their own validation. The feedback from people using the parts in different designs, with different software, with different physical environments is very important since the test space is effectively infinite. Intel validates in many, many ways, but still can't prac
This is a good thing. (Score:3)
If more companies replaced their defective products at their own expense, this would be a better world. And people would be more focused on making things work before they ship the product.
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is in the current world, a lot of companies go under if they do that.
So you have:
A) the companies that screw you over
B)The companies that don't...oh wait, those went under.
Ok, so you have A) the companies that screw you over. Thats it.
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They only go under because of the bad companies polluting the market. If we had consumer laws with actual teeth, the honest companies could win.
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Of course, I would too. Unfortunately we don't make up the majority of human population :)
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The thing is most people don't have the time to thouroughly research everything they buy, so in a market a buyer is unfamiliar with price wins because it's the easiest thing to compare.
Further it is very easy for a company that has hit financial problems or is just under stock market pressure to get better figures to decide to trade their reputation for short term profits. It's a much harder descision for a company to trade away their short term profits in the hope a gain in reputation down the road.
Now what about dell, hp, and others with bad chips (Score:2)
Now what about dell, hp, and others with bad chipsets? will they do a swap? make you pay to ship the system in? make you pay for a tech to swap a board? Let you swap the board on your own? Not even offer a free swap?
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I'm assuming Dell and HP will handle it through their usual warranty process, i.e. when customers call to complain their PC has died. Alternately, they might still be working on an official announcement of their own. A recall isn't something you launch on a whim.
Thank you. (Score:2)
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, e
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Re:What About Intel's Own Motherboards? (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I think that sounds like an excellent response from Intel. Did you expect them to send a car right over with a replacement Mobo?
They just announced the problem. They don't have 8 million replacement chips, or 8 million replacement motherboards in house. If they waited until they did have that many, somebody would bitch about them delaying the announcement.
The rep answered your questions truthfully, told you that the exchanges would be handled through the retailer, and suggested that your board will probably work just fine until a replacement is available. Again, what more did you expect?
Angry? Sure you can be angry. Someone sold you something that's defective, and that's causing you problems. They can't immediately make it right, and that's going to cause you more problems. Suck it up - it happens everywhere, all the time, and is part of life.
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Intel never sold you the motherboard so they can not offer a refund. I do not see why this is surprising. If I purchased an Apple computer from a local retailer I would not be able to return it directly to Apple for a refund. This situation is no different. Note that I could send it back to Apple for repairs/replacement - just not for a refund.
Now if Intel had a fix available they would probably offer replacement motherboards - but no such fix is available. Their customer support told you of your optio
Oh stop looking for reason to be angry (Score:5, Insightful)
I swear, some people are just looking for reasons to be pissed off.
So, Intel has offered you the ability to either get a refund now, or a replacement board later. What's more, to get your refund you don't have to deal with them, you deal with the people that sold you the board, Intel will reimburse them. Like if it is Newegg just contact them and they'll issue you a full refund RMA, no questions asked, for any product that contained a 67 chipset, mobo, laptop, etc.
You cannot be provided with a replacement right now, because there are none to be had, they are being made. However if you'd rather not get a refund and use the system as it is, that's fine you can do that and then get a replacement in a month or two when they are out on the market.
Seems to me as though they've done everything they can to rectify the situation. They are fixing the problem and everyone gets a free replacement when the fixed units are out. If you are unwilling or unable to wait, then you can send back the stuff for a full refund right now.
If this doesn't satisfy you I see only one of two situations:
1) You want a fixed chip right now. That means you are an idiot, expecting you can have something before it is physically possible.
2) You want Intel to issue you a refund directly, rather than the retailer because you feel that is a better "punishment" or something. In that case you are just being unreasonable. You can get your refund, just talk to the place that sold it. Hell you'll get it faster that way.
Seriously, I fail to see the big deal. There is a fuckup, they are doing what they can to fix it. Nothing else can be done that I can see.
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So is your vendor refusing to support you? If not, what's your problem? If your car has a recall, do you take it to the dealer (who is likely his own business), or call up corporate HQ and demand they ship you the new part?
They are using vendors as the channel of distribution. There's nothing wrong with that, and genrally ensures everyone gets served more quickly.
Newegg will refund, too (Score:2)
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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.
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Cougar Point only works with Sandy Bridge chips, and Sandy Bridge is a much more publicized name, so that's what the news outlets are running with. It may not be totally correct, but it's not totally incorrect either. Many people with Sandy Bridge CPUs don't realize they also have a Cougar Point chipset.
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All currently available motherboards for Sandy Bridge processors use the Cougar Point chip and are potentially affected - even the ones in notebooks. The headline is correct.
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Does it matter anymore as only Intel makes chips to go with the newest Intel processors and there's a new generation of chips for each new CPU generation. "Sandy Bridge boards" == "Cougar Point" for all intents and purposes.
In fact, motherboards have become increasingly generic. There's your choice of chipset and how many USB/SATA ports come extra, but for the most part you could really just have Intel make all of them except for the anti-trust hell that'd make.
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Actually if you plan to use any cards you need to chose your motherboard carefully. The relatively small number of PCIe lanes combined with the large number of things that people want (or at least the motherboard vendors thing people want) but that aren't in the chipset means you need to really pay attention to the PCIe configuration and see if it matches you needs. Looking at what slots are physically there is NOT sufficiant due to the use of lane switches (motherboard vendors use the misleading term "shar
I've mostly bought AMD over the years but... (Score:3)
I really have mostly supported AMD over the years. A lot times it comes down to the fact that they generally have the best price/performance in my/others budget range(most computers I build are in the $1000-1500 range) when I'm building computers and I also have a certain comfort level with them in that I've scrapped a lot fewer AMD cpus than Intel ones.
However, I have to say. I'm really impressed with how Intel is handling this. There must be a nice bit of extra support for board vendors as well, especially with the huge loss numbers they're predicting and how good the board manufacturers are being with this situation.
This could have been a really bad PR event. Instead I think I might be buying Intel when its time to upgrade again in 6-12 months.
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So that you too can experience broken parts?
To me this is them doing the least they could, the right thing would be a refund since you can't use any boards right now and a new board when they are available. This makes the CPU you bought from them worthless, so just offering a replacement in 2 months is nuts.
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If you read the article, it is an issue that isn't apparent right away (Intel had to use a extraordinary testing conditions to cause it to happen) and when it does, the 2 SATA3 ports are unaffected. From the Anandtech article:
So far Intel has only been able to document the issue after running extended testing at high temperatures (in a thermal chamber) and voltages. My recommendation is to try to only use ports 0 & 1 (the 6Gbps ports) on your 6-series motherboard until you get a replacement in place.
So it isn't like your computer is unusable, most people will never experience the issue between now and April when replacement boards are available. So the CPU you bought is hardly worthless.
Seems to me that they are handling it well enough, clearly they are working with their vendors
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Please do explain how I fit my two boot drives(RAID0) and my RAID5 array on just two sata ports
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You don't. You're screwed.
You can buy a SATA card for $20, but next you'll tell me that all your card slots are in use for fax modems or something.
You can use your motherboard until replacements are available. If it fails, then you can look at your options again.
Or, you can send your board back to your retailer, get your money back, and buy a new board, hopefully one with the updated chip.
In the grand scheme of things, your problem is trivial.
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We all point at you and laugh for using something as CPU intensive as RAID5 on a consumer grade SATA controller. What, you didn't think the XOR operations and striping came for free, did you? No, your CPU gets to XOR and align the data on the drive whenever a write to the array is made. This obviously kills write performance and is also fairly CPU intensive. It also defeats the purpose of DMA for writes. Reads are not impaired in a RAID5 array, however.
I suppose that SATA multiplexers exist which add a
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No, my CPU is not worthless and I'm using the MB right now. My SATA ports are fully populated. So far I've ripped 342 DVDs into about 700GB of MP4s and then copied them to a media server. I've moved almost 2 TB of ISOs to a new HD. If the performance starts to suffer I'll move the system and a data drive to Port 0/1 and move the optical drives to 2-5 and not worry about the rest. NewEgg did offer me a refund but I'm going to wait for a replacement. I can't think of any part that I didn't get a lemon at some
Stalin? (Score:2)
J. Dzhugashvili writes
Oh, for fuck sake, stay dead!
Excess supply soon? (Score:2)
So the bad ones are going back for refurbishing while new ones are being pumped out?
That means we can expect the mobo market to be flooded with supply soon?
$50 sandy bridge motherboards in May oh please oh please oh please.
bought it overseas (Score:2)
I live in Venezuela. Went to Australia for vacation on december where they started to sell the motherboards and cpu's since october. Bought it, asked intel and gigabyte and they told me to just go to the store where i bought it and ask for a refund.
Sucks to be me since that option isn't viable for me. Even sending the motherboard overseas and waiting for a new motherboard isn't viable since it would cost me in shipping charges even more than what i paid (around 150 dollars)
List of affected models (Score:2)
Is there a list anywhere?
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I have the opposite experience with Gigabyte, to me they have been rocksolid while MSI boards kept failing on me.
Asrocks are filthy pieces of cheap junk.
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The amusing thing is from what I can gather most of those chips were never returned and the whole thing turned out to be largely a storm in a teacup.
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Because these are SATA ports, that carry DATA, which could become corrupted on the way to or from the hard drive. There is a risk of data corruption that could go on undetected before the part actually fails and becomes unusable. How would you like to lose a couple years worth of valuable work documents thanks to a simple component failure that could have been prevented by the manufacturer taking appropriate steps? Remember, these chips are going into more than just game PC's... many of them are used in cri
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Actually... this sounds pretty much like what I'd expect.
What do you think doesn't jive?
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Interesting point, but I suspect it refers to a bridge on the Sandy River, a river near Portland, OR, which is (fairly) near Intel's R&D fabs.
They have a habit of naming stuff after rivers (and other places, often small towns), e.g. Nehalem, Tualatin, Clackamas, Willamette.
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Perhaps, but it was designed by Intel's developement center in Haifa, Israel, codenamed "gesher" - hebrew for "bridge". They changed it because there was a political party with that same name there.