Sandy Bridge workaround

[festerovic]

If it isn't obvious, you can buy an expansion card for $10-20 that adds 4 sataII ports to your motherboard that lets you get past the motherboard fail. If you are buying a new machine and wanted to wait until the problem was resolved, both newegg and Asrock have pledged to help when replacements come out. I am not worried in the least.

Don't let this get you down on SB, its a big step past 1156/1366 in performance IMO. Really, not that big of a problem. I love 4.4 ghz at stock voltage on my 2600k.

 

[bearclaw99]

Yeah, I have 4 SATA 3 ports as it is. Gutting the system when the replacement comes out is kind of a pain though

 

[MU_Engineer]

If it isn't obvious, you can buy an expansion card for $10-20 that adds 4 sataII ports to your motherboard that lets you get past the motherboard fail. If you are buying a new machine and wanted to wait until the problem was resolved, both newegg and Asrock have pledged to help when replacements come out. I am not worried in the least.

Don't let this get you down on SB, its a big step past 1156/1366 in performance IMO. Really, not that big of a problem. I love 4.4 ghz at stock voltage on my 2600k.

You can buy a four-port SATA-300 expansion card for $20, but it's going to be some horrible pile of crap PCI unit that bottlenecks even one low-RPM "green" hard drive. Trust me, I've been there before and it is awful from a performance perspective. You really should not look at anything less than PCIe x4 if you are buying a four-port card as four SATA-300 ports have an aggregate I/O of up to 1.2 GB/sec, and PCIe x4 provides 1 or 2 GB/sec depending on if it's v1.1 or v2.0. A PCIe x4 four-port SATA-300 card costs about as much as an average Sandy Bridge motherboard (a little under $100 up to about $150) so it's not really a good workaround. Just wait until the units with revised chipsets come out.

 

[festerovic]

Not concerned with theoretical max speeds - I, like many others, will only need more ports for optical drives, since only 2 of the 4 sata3 ports work with optical drives, and I have may want more than 2 hard drives in the future. So, while I would agree performance would suck if one was to use SSDs or similar. But for optical drives and storage HDD, likely not a big concern.

Also you can get PCIe 1x cards, not just PCI, so they are a little faster.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Not concerned with theoretical max speeds - I, like many others, will only need more ports for optical drives, since only 2 of the 4 sata3 ports work with optical drives, and I have may want more than 2 hard drives in the future. So, while I would agree performance would suck if one was to use SSDs or similar. But for optical drives and storage HDD, likely not a big concern.

Also you can get PCIe 1x cards, not just PCI, so they are a little faster.

The PCIe x1 cards are almost all 2-port units and all of the inexpensive 4-port units are PCI. Anything with 4 SATA ports and a PCIe interface is going to be a PCIe x4 unit and cost $70+, with the exception of the $120 HighPoint RR2300 which is a PCIe x1 unit. I'd agree that a PCI SATA controller would be fine for only optical drives but they will bottleneck at even one mechanical HDD if it's relatively recent. A very good PCI SATA controller will be bottlenecked by the PCI bus, which is about 110-115 MB/sec in actual disk throughput. A typical $20 cheapie one may bottleneck at more like 40-50 MB/sec because the controller sucks. I've seen both. You would not notice the bottleneck in the first case too much, but it would be glaringly apparent in the latter case if you ever move/copy/virus scan files on the storage HDD. Also, HDDs keep getting faster as time goes on and what may not be a big bottleneck today may end up becoming a major pain in the butt later when you get a new HDD. If you intend on upgrading the board next year or sooner, then go ahead and buy a throwaway PCI card. If you don't, then do yourself a favor and get a good PCIe controller card or wait for a fully-functional motherboard so that you don't need a discrete controller card.

 

[festerovic]

But I want my cake and to eat it to, not sit around and complain about a mobo problem. I will get my board swapped eventually, so a throwaway card is the name of the game. It cost me $600 for ram mobo and CPU. $20 on a card is not a big deal. It doesnt have to be the best solution, just one that works and is safe. Is not running a raid. It needs to last 3 months.

Also I have never seen 40-50MB max off any sata controller I have ever used. Not one. I don't doubt your own experience, but mine has been that every motherboard or controller I have personally used gave me more speed than that.

 

[jpmucha]

Knowing that a replacement board is on the way... I'm having no issue using the SATA2 ports. If you need all 6 ports working and the SATA2 ports start dropping out on you... I think the $20 would keep you working until the replacement board comes. With Intel's assertion that this is a 5% issue after 3 years of use (I don't necessarily buy that... but that's the line)... I think you'll survive 3 months.

And I agree with bearclaw99, the board swap out will be an (otherwise unnecessary) pain... but I'll survive and do it with a smile...

 

[leon2006]

If it isn't obvious, you can buy an expansion card for $10-20 that adds 4 sataII ports to your motherboard that lets you get past the motherboard fail. If you are buying a new machine and wanted to wait until the problem was resolved, both newegg and Asrock have pledged to help when replacements come out. I am not worried in the least.

Don't let this get you down on SB, its a big step past 1156/1366 in performance IMO. Really, not that big of a problem. I love 4.4 ghz at stock voltage on my 2600k.

An SSD for main drive( Connect to SATA-III), 2 Bid drives (in RAID SATA-II) for DATA configuration is more than sufficient to mask this problem until the replacement board is available.

Boards that are affected can use 3rd party controller which normally runs faster than on-board controller.

This is minor issue for those who already have the board. Most of the boards won't see the problem until the replacement is available this April.