Sandy Bridge chipset design flaw, shipments stopped and recalls begin

Intel finds Sandy Bridge chipset design flaw, shipments stopped and recalls beginning

Engadget is such a hack tech site

LOL nice!!

More importantly....what happens to those of us who already built a SB machine?

I'd assume they'll send you a new chip or make you send back yours.

Yes, I expect that you'd return your chip, and they'd send you a new one. I wonder how soon retailers will receive new sandybridge chipsets, without the flaw.

[Edit]:Seller, don't . Either wait a little bit for retailers to have their stock replaced with fixed chipsets, or buy and send back when the recall is going. I'd advise the first of those two, especially since you were going to wait 2 weeks anyway. 2 weeks should be enough for retailers to stock a fixed chipset.

the processors are fine the design flaw is in the Cougar chipset .so youll need to return the entire MOBO. i assume the cougar chipset is soldered

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Int [...] 1682.shtml

Flaw only effects chipsets shipped Jan9th and later.

Question: is this affecting JUST Intel motherboards, or is it a chipset wide flaw? IE: Would other board manufacturers be affected?

Wow...all I can say is...wow.

Every company makes mistakes. They happen. It looks like Intel learned from past mistakes the hard way and is "doing the right thing" by announcing it early, taking the hit publicly, and putting it all on the books so accounting can write off the losses appropriately.

For those of you early adopters, I hope this bug doesn't affect you outside of the replacement of your defective motherboards. If you happen to be one of those users affected by this bug...my condolences.

Personally, I have been there with several products in the past, and learned the hard way to wait for version 2.0 if it's possible, since 1.0 will most likely have all the killer bugs.

Maybe now folks will be able to look as BD and SB performance numbers side-by-side when they comparison shop. I don't expect anything earth shattering, just numbers that are more in line with the next generation of performance.

Again, kudos to Intel for rising above it all, and condolences to folks out there caught in the middle.

^+1 Thanks GhislainG

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142 [...] ins-recall

VERY Interesting...In theory, if you stick to the 6GB ports, you'll be fine...

Does anyone that knows more than me have any idea as to the probability of Intel offering a z68 trade in or trade up program? Or are the really gonna leave us holding our **** and stick us with the same P67 or H67 that we got?

EDIT: I've used AMD in the past and don't know a whole lot about Intel's business practices.

It isn't free. You already paid them for something that wasn't made correctly.

IMO they should offer the upgrade path as a consolation for the inconvenience.

But whether they will or not is another question.

"For existing owners, I would hope that Intel and the motherboard manufacturers might offer some sort of a trade-up or trade-in program to move to Z68 since you're going to have to replace your motherboard anyway". Anand Lal Shimpi

I'm going to have to hope that Anand has some insight that I don't, but I too hope that they are going to offer a trade-up in this case.

Well sir, I demand satisfaction suh!

I challenge Intel to a dual!!!

It would be nice, but who knows.

The only thing I really care about is SSD caching with z68 chipset.

Wow, Intel screws up yet again.......

First with P55 having defective cpu sockets that burn up the cpu and now the P67 has issues.

I just posted the other day how I always wait for the second or third cpu stepping and the second motherboard revision.....now you know why.

Remember the i815 chipset and Rambus?? Remember Phenom I? Remember P55 (foxconn sockets)? Now P67.....

This is going to seriously hurt sales. BIG TIME. It's also going to cost the mobo makers millions as they have to handle all the rma's and ship new product for replacement. OUCH!

This is what happens when you try to release product early before it's been tested properly. Hopefully AMD learned their lesson with Phenom I.

The first issue was Foxcon, as I recall, and not intel.

Again, the issue seems limited to JUST the SATA II ports; SATA III appears unaffected. As such, its entirely possible to use the SATA III ports, and not the SATA II ports, and you'll be fine. And with most motherboards having 3 year warantees, I don't see any real problems for current users.

EDIT

Also, AMD looses BIG now; Imagine if Bulldozer was already out. Even IF it lost to SB head to head, this would be the time to pick up sales. Now, Intel will have the "fixed" platform out, and BD STILL won't have launched.

I still don't get it, is this affecting the CPUs and/or the motherboards? I ordered a 2600k and a P8P67 Deluxe last week.. What does this mean for me?

They do test, its just some things occur over time, and in very low percentages, so any errors by an individual item during mass qualification testing [which may include thousands of samples] could be rejected as a defect. Hence why the problem wasn't caught until over a hundred thousand boards were sold.

Its a motherboard issue, in particular, with the SATA II ports. Over time, the connection between the controller and ports MAY degrade, causing the eventual disappearence of the drive [the data itself is safe, you simply can't connect to anything over SATA II anymore].

The SATA III ports will continue to work without issue. As such, as long as you use SATA 0 and 1 [the SATA III ports], you should be error free. With the other SATA ports, there is a percentage risk of degrading performance over time, and eventual failure.

So, for instance, a user with only 1 HDD and 1 optical drive could connect both over the SATA III ports, and this problem would never manifest itself. A user with more then that does run some risk [RAID comes to mind...].

In short: Theres x% chance of declining performance over the SATA II ports, eventually leading to total failure. SATA III continues to work as intended.

Andrey, it means at some point you will have to take apart your new build and send back the motherboard for replacement. The CPU is fine, and the problem rarely surfaces, but all 67 chipsets are defective.

That's how I configured it, and there is no chance they will need more drives. I guess I'll take the wait and see approach. Thanks.

To be fair, Intel is suspecting a 5% failure rate over 3 years. Considering volume, its a lot, but ONLY 5%. And as has been stated: The SATA 3 ports are working as intended, so a lot of users won't even be USING the defective ports. Its an issue, but one only slightly above the FDIV bug from Pentium lore, because this one actually will affect some people.

Not if its the same type board. And Microsoft is actually quite good when it comes to issues like these, its not like they'll forget half of Wintel had a massive product recall anytime soon.

I'm just a bit mistified at how it was SATA II of all things that could cause Intel this much grief; you'd think we'd have mastered SATA II by now, right? Kinda makes you wonder why we just didn't replace SATA II with SATA III, considering how most everything works with the new spec...

Well the good news is Intel has the billion dollars to burn that it's gonna cost to fix this issue, not to mention another billion in lost sales while they stop shipments and manufacturing of motherboards. Hopefully the OEM's (MSI< ASUS<ASROCK< ECS<GIGA<ETC) will get reimbursement from Intel for all the rma and replacement shipping costs as well. I can tell you right now it's gonna be A LOT more than the 700million they are estimating. What a crock.

All I can say is, Oops.

Glad I waited. Was set on the i7 2600k and p8p67 pro. The only pieces for my new build I have actually purchased are the PS, which I'll keep, and the Ripjaws X RAM that just came from Newegg. Think I'll return the unopened RAM and work with my old Core2 6600 system a while longer!