Sandy Bridge Owners; Immediate Return, or waiting?

[aardwolf]

As someone who just started getting their Sandy Bridge parts in the mail, I'm curious what other owners are planning to do, now that the very serious SATA II issue on the controller chipset has been identified.

 

[greenrider02]

I just got my ASRock P67Extreme4 and it doesn't seem like it's really going to trouble me that much in the end. For now I'm going to use the SATAIII ports and continue building and then when some issue comes up or there's a very reasonable replacement policy I'll consider if it's worth it for me to go through with sending it back.

 

[aardwolf]

Personally that's the route I'm going to take. Got an ASUS P8P67 Deluxe with 4 SATA II ports. Worst case, I can snake some cables around for an extra 2 (e)SATA ports. They're still 3GBps and they're a separate controller chipset.

 

[mortonww]

Yeah, same plan here. We've got the parts ordered and they've shipped, so we're just gonna build and replace the motherboard in April when the fixed ones come out. It might be a bit of a hassle, but oh well.

 

[aardwolf]

The thing that would most bother me however, is having my machine built and running, and potentially having to replace it later, with a multiple-day downtime while the parts are cross-shipping.

Let's just say I really skimped on my couch laptop (stock inspiron 1525).

 

[mortonww]

Yeah, that's gonna suck. But friend needs his pc up now and the exchange should last into next quarter when he'll be off of school, so hopefully the downtime won't be that harmful.

 

[geekapproved]

What other choice do you have other than keeping them for now?? The B3 chipsets won't be out till April, so if you send your board in now, your down till April, that would be dumb.

 

[odienpooke]

Ive got all my sandy bridge parts together and running a 24 hr. water test and be firing it up tomorrow. I'll run the system until Asus has a new MB ready for me.

 

[dLou]

So I shouldn't regret ordering my parts on amazon?

 

[aardwolf]

Mine's finally up and running (with a nice SSD); seems pretty good, although the 2nd controller for SATA's being a bit finicky. This thing runs quiet and cool.

 

[a2love]

I'm actually building out my rig tonight... Asus P8P67pro with the i5 2500k.

I currently only have a WD Black 7200 and an optical drive... so I am fine for now. In april when I can replace the board I'm going to pick up a new SSD, hook that up to the new board either in the marvell or working Sata II ports (or put the HDD on the Marvell/Sata II and the SSD on the intel SATA III), and re-install windows. It will be like a new upgrade for a new machine... should be pretty fun

But, in the mean time using the Intel/Marvell SATA ports with the option to use the eSATA with some cable routing is not the end of the world. I just hate to have to scrape off that thermal paste from my CPU heatsink and drive 45min to NCIX for a replacement... kinda sucks but not that big of a deal really.

 

[triculious]

I'll be returning mine on during the last week of March hoping that I won't be left without my rig for too long
right now it's running awesomely

 

[a2love]

I'm hoping that since I bought mine in store at NCIX I can just call ahead, walk in with the broken board and walk out with the fixed.... however I'm skeptical.

Damn these P67 boards and their slight flaw... yet otherwise awesome performance.

 

[aardwolf]

On my p8p67 deluxe, all of the SATA II ports are Intel. I have 4x Intel Sata II 3GBps, 2x Intel SATA III 6GBps, and 2x Marvell SATA III 6GBps.

Unless you're talking about the eSATA port(s) on the back? At any rate, be sure, before you lose data on your SATA II ports.

 

[aardwolf]

I wish my poll itself wasn't a fail. I was curious to see what the distribution was, but for some reason couldn't get it to let people vote.

 

[odienpooke]

So I shouldn't regret ordering my parts on amazon?

No way, My asus board is up and running. I bought the P8P67 deluxe. It's got 4 of the 6Gbs ports. Everthing else I've read about the board says its the best out there.

 

[aardwolf]

No way, My asus board is up and running. I bought the P8P67 deluxe. It's got 4 of the 6Gbs ports. Everthing else I've read about the board says its the best out there.

Out of curiosity, are you getting crazy stop errors too? I'm trying to narrow down if I have faulty hardware (board, cpu, SSD, graphics card), or just bad drivers somewhere.

I'm getting many different stop errors and having difficulty narrowing down a cause.

 

[odienpooke]

Out of curiosity, are you getting crazy stop errors too? I'm trying to narrow down if I have faulty hardware (board, cpu, SSD, graphics card), or just bad drivers somewhere.

I'm getting many different stop errors and having difficulty narrowing down a cause.

Yes , mine keeps restarting and the led on back of board gives me a code 59. Which has something to do with the CPU micro-code. trying to update bios now. Must say Cryis is looking better than ever.

 

[aardwolf]

My board looks like it has a bad DIMM slot 0. Finally got it stable after lots and lots of memtest-86 runs. (Test 5 especially flaked out)

I'll have to give crysis another shot now -- it was unplayable due to all of the crashes before (and it starts out in the night level; not great for the visuals compared to later in the game).

 

[odienpooke]

Just quit cryis, everything looks so dam good. Explosions look real. After flashing BIOS most of the bugs are gone. How dimms you running? I've read that the best is to run only 2. I'm running only slots 2 & 4.

 

[Spiderm0n]

I'm keeping mine. Only using the two SATA III ports.

 

[aardwolf]

I'm running (I know it's a bad idea) 3 DIMMS... slots 1,2,3 (slot 0 is empty; I have to determine if the slot is dusty, bad, or I have a bad DIMM -- memcheck test 5 goes NUTS when I use slot 0).

 

[odienpooke]

I'm running (I know it's a bad idea) 3 DIMMS... slots 1,2,3 (slot 0 is empty; I have to determine if the slot is dusty, bad, or I have a bad DIMM -- memcheck test 5 goes NUTS when I use slot 0).

Have you tried swapping dimms from slot to slot? That would at least rule out a bad dimm. Still having some trouble with Cryis, it won't let me set the resolution any higher than 1024x 768,the options panel just locks up. I have a 1080P monitor,so ant\ything less is a waste of time.

 

[aardwolf]

Have you tried swapping dimms from slot to slot? That would at least rule out a bad dimm. Still having some trouble with Cryis, it won't let me set the resolution any higher than 1024x 768,the options panel just locks up. I have a 1080P monitor,so ant\ything less is a waste of time.

Short answer, yes. But I'm not totally convinced it's not dust as I managed to have issues with the other slots as well. I was hasty the first few swaps, but I started a systemic approach (and wrote down what chips I used in what slots!) and got it up to 3 slots and 3 chips used (12GB). My system's been stable for 2 days now, but some time I'll bite the bullet and finish the diagnostic job with air can in hand and try a working chip in that dimm 0 slot.

 

[odienpooke]

I know just your talking about, you try everything, and still it doesn't seem like anything works 100% like its suppose to. I'm going to let the dust settle andtry again. Keep me informed.