Intel Chipset Design Error!!!

I feel bad for all you early adopters, I would have been livid. What a travesty from Intel! Perfect break for AMD though. Oh well, I hope your RMAs go smoothly.

And for the people here with only one rig, who will be forced to have quite some downtime or purchase NOS equipment to build a temp rig... always, always keep many working computers around! :D

Once you get burned as a early adopter you never go back.

I know. My motherboard burst into flames yesterday just after the 5 year warranty expired. Unbelievably at the same time when the Intel news was announced.

See how ridiculous I can sound too?

Specators just specate.:rolleyes:
Always waiting for something better to come out but never pull the trigger, then justify their aging PC when something happens.

I could probably sell my mobo and CPU at a nice profit on Ebay.
 
Before anyone rushes out and buys a SATA3 controller; I have the Asus p8p67 deluxe and I was unable to get a highpoint rocket 620 controller to work in the first pci-e x1 slot (this is the only 1x slot that is available when you install a dual-width video card in the primary x16 slot). The highpoint rocket 620 controller is the host bus adapter they include when you buy a "bare" western digital 3tb green drive.

The highpoint Marvell SATA3 controller interfered with the on board Marvell SATA3 controller. I could only get the Marvell controller on the card *or* the on board Marvell controller to work but not both simultaneously. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers in various combination and I also tried to force installation of the Highpoint version of the driver that I downloaded from their website. In the device manager I saw that both the first x1 slot and the on board Marvell controller hang off of the PLX chip and there is apparently some conflict there.

I have been able to use a Asus u3s6 card in the x4 slot with no problems, but I need an additional SATA port for my optical drive. I'm using the on board Marvell 2x SATA3 6.0 ports, the 2x Intel SATA3 6.0 ports, the u3s6's 2x SATA3 ports. For now, I've plugged the optical drive in an affected Intel SATA2 3.0 port.
 
None of which affects me, since I only have a hard drive and an optical going into the 6G ports anyway...

It's like having a "fatal flaw" on the car cigarette lighter when you're a non-smoker..who cares? (of course, in this case the "fatal" part would be that 5% of the time over the next 3 years the lighter might not get hot enough to light anything)

This. When you are fairly certain that you will never use anything other than the problem free ports, this little setback is particularly infuriating.
 
AMD needs to release Bulldozer NOW!

Indeed. Would be a SB killer if successful.

It would only need to be reliable and compariable in performance at this point. They could call it Phenom3 and still take away potential Intel buyers.
If they did launch Bulldozer early; as in this month, it would be very bad timing for Intel. Im sure there are guys at AMD clamouring for a chance to release it now on the trip-up of Intel's
 
Before anyone rushes out and buys a SATA3 controller; I have the Asus p8p67 deluxe and I was unable to get a highpoint rocket 620 controller to work in the first pci-e x1 slot (this is the only 1x slot that is available when you install a dual-width video card in the primary x16 slot). The highpoint rocket 620 controller is the host bus adapter they include when you buy a "bare" western digital 3tb green drive.

The highpoint Marvell SATA3 controller interfered with the on board Marvell SATA3 controller. I could only get the Marvell controller on the card *or* the on board Marvell controller to work but not both simultaneously. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers in various combination and I also tried to force installation of the Highpoint version of the driver that I downloaded from their website. In the device manager I saw that both the first x1 slot and the on board Marvell controller hang off of the PLX chip and there is apparently some conflict there.

I have been able to use a Asus u3s6 card in the x4 slot with no problems, but I need an additional SATA port for my optical drive. I'm using the on board Marvell 2x SATA3 6.0 ports, the 2x Intel SATA3 6.0 ports, the u3s6's 2x SATA3 ports. For now, I've plugged the optical drive in an affected Intel SATA2 3.0 port.

Dunno if thats the case for every board or just urs,,, but if there is indeed some conflict with every board then there goes the bandaid solution LOL
 
I have been able to use a Asus u3s6 card in the x4 slot with no problems, but I need an additional SATA port for my optical drive. I'm using the on board Marvell 2x SATA3 6.0 ports, the 2x Intel SATA3 6.0 ports, the u3s6's 2x SATA3 ports. For now, I've plugged the optical drive in an affected Intel SATA2 3.0 port.

I'm interested in picking up a U3S6 as well. Started a thread asking if the using the SATA ports on such a card would yield lower performance than using the SATA ports on the motherboard.

Responders say that the SATAIII ports on the U3S6 are slower than the SATAII ports built right into these Sandy Bridge motherboards:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1582231
 
While this may be a functional alternative, from a corporate PR perspective hardly feasible, handing out free sata controllers would look like Intel was trying to provide a bandaid solution, in the end the underlying problem still exists. If they were to issue this option, more then likely current owners would be denied RMA. Consider most consumers if not all buy something and expect it to fully function without fail regardless how small an issue would be, the principal is you buy something it should work as intended out of the box. Intel would be hammered by public opinion if they continued to sell flawed boards while waiting for the new revision to be fabricated and shipped. Now if they offered a choice then that be awesome, however thats just added cost with the extra controllers and boards, I think Intel expects that some current users will not bother RMAing their boards.

Im not saying they should only do that im saying it should be an option. There needs to be some sort of band aid solution for this. Simply stating "send the board in and hope for one by May" is asking a hell of a lot from their customers especially considering this mostly affects the enthusiast market.

Offer a nice sata controller as an option for those that dont want to send them in. Many enthusiasts will jump on that and the OEM market can just add the controllers, mark the sata ports as bad or remove them and ship the sandy bridge PCs instead of waiting.

Intel needs to keep SB out there and this is a viable solution. If they fuck around and leave RMAing the boards as the only option they are wide open for AMD to slap them around for a quarter or 2.

Dont just consider the enthusiasts, think of all the OEMs that will be shipping bulldozer machines instead of SB if they dont clean this mess up quickly. AMD stands to make an awful lot from this.
 
It would only need to be reliable and compariable in performance at this point. They could call it Phenom3 and still take away potential Intel buyers.
If they did launch Bulldozer early; as in this month, it would be very bad timing for Intel. Im sure there are guys at AMD clamouring for a chance to release it now on the trip-up of Intel's

I think the chances of comparable performance to SB are slim to none. I will be positively surprised if it is even able to keep up with a pre-SB Core i7-8xx / quad core i5.

That being said, seeing that volume shipments of socket 1155 motherboards won't arrive until April, this does give AMD the chance to do a CeBIT soft-launch of Bulldozer and give users a taste of what is to come. That may allow them to keep some of the customers that want to buy AMD, but need to upgrade now and otherwise would have gone to SB...

I - for one - hope they do this. I'm about a month away from building a new system, and I would rather buy AMD than SB, provided the AMD isn't completely outclassed.

I would be OK with a slight performance disadvantage in order to not buy Intel....
 
I built on a Gigabyte UD3R right when SB dropped and just heard about this problem. I'm also too lazy to read the whole thread.

I assume we're just waiting until the fix is out and then it's RMA time? Or is there any point in holding on to a flawed board?

Let's hope they offer cross-shipping.
 
I built on a Gigabyte UD3R right when SB dropped and just heard about this problem. I'm also too lazy to read the whole thread.

I assume we're just waiting until the fix is out and then it's RMA time? Or is there any point in holding on to a flawed board?

Let's hope they offer cross-shipping.

I'd guess that reasonable people are waiting, while some people are panic-returning their stuff. But maybe that is a mischaracterization colored by my personal rational approach to the situation.
 
Guys, do you think we will get a brand new board without having to return the ones we have or the companies will try to fix it?
 
fixing mb is labor intensive and you are never guaranteed that the replacement was done properly...most likely board will be scrapped for parts
 
fixing mb is labor intensive and you are never guaranteed that the replacement was done properly...most likely board will be scrapped for parts

It would run through a machine just like it would on the assembly line. The chances of the fix being done properly would be the same chances of a board being made properly.

I highly doubt they will be scrapping anything.
 
Guys, do you think we will get a brand new board without having to return the ones we have or the companies will try to fix it?

I think the odds of that are slim to none. My guess is that if you have a P67 MB you will get a new replacement when they are available, but you will have to send yours in. They will take the defective motherboards and fix them and use them as warranty replacements or sell them as refurbished/B stock.
 
With a few exceptions, all the P67 / H67 boards have limited SATA channels. On most of them, filling up all the card slots means turning off (many) motherboard features. That's certainly the case with the board I have. An add on card is not much of a band aid for these boards.

If it's a vote, the last thing in the world I'd want to see is a "repaired" board. If you have ever changed out a BGA, it's a ugly task. Combine that with the fact that you won't get the same board back - no thanks. That's trading one low percentage risk for a likely higher one.
 
I think the odds of that are slim to none. My guess is that if you have a P67 MB you will get a new replacement when they are available, but you will have to send yours in. They will take the defective motherboards and fix them and use them as warranty replacements or sell them as refurbished/B stock.

I will wait few more days and then return my bundle to MC. I do not want to have to deal with ASUS RMA department.
 
It would run through a machine just like it would on the assembly line. The chances of the fix being done properly would be the same chances of a board being made properly.

I highly doubt they will be scrapping anything.

They would not be going through the same machine to do the repair. Putting a BGA on the first time is not like pulling it off and putting on another one. You solder screen and place an entire board at once first time through. For the replacement, you simply can't do it that way - to much stuff in the way. Can it be done - sure, but it's ugly and expensive.

You also have a significant amount of disassembly before you can even get it on the machine. Pulling off heatsinks, who knows what else. The board goes together in layers and you have to dig down to get to the right layer first. Lots of cost.

Past that you have a board that's been out in the real world for a while. It may have all sorts of latent damage. Much of that can't be "tested for" the only way to find it is when it fails. The Sandy Bridge sockets are hardly what I woud call robust. Net result, even if the board guy is perfect, there's still significant risk.

This sort of stuff gets scrapped all the time. Modern manufacturing is very much focused on never needing to do a repair.
 
Zarathustra[H];1036788306 said:
I think the chances of comparable performance to SB are slim to none. I will be positively surprised if it is even able to keep up with a pre-SB Core i7-8xx / quad core i5.

That being said, seeing that volume shipments of socket 1155 motherboards won't arrive until April, this does give AMD the chance to do a CeBIT soft-launch of Bulldozer and give users a taste of what is to come. That may allow them to keep some of the customers that want to buy AMD, but need to upgrade now and otherwise would have gone to SB...

I - for one - hope they do this. I'm about a month away from building a new system, and I would rather buy AMD than SB, provided the AMD isn't completely outclassed.

I would be OK with a slight performance disadvantage in order to not buy Intel....


It's not at all clear that volume board shipments start up in April. Intel is talking about volume chip shipments in April. A lot of the motherboards we have right now were built in November and December. You could easily be looking at June for replacement boards.
 
Is there a chance this problem exists to some degree on the previous generation chipset? I would assume a SATA controller would be mostly regurgitated from one generation to the next, especially since the problem lies with 3.0Gbps ports.

The reason I'm asking is because at work we have had on two occasions now, unexplainable drive "failures" on some of Intel's previous generation motherboards, more like timeouts until the point where the OS gives up. Swapping hard drives never fixed the problem, nor did swapping power supplies. After some reboots, the systems would boot fine. Other times it would boot only to have drive read timeouts and crash.

Could be totally unrelated, but the symptoms would seem to match up to this SATA bug.
 
Sucks.

I just bought an entirely new rig built around this chipset - now what to do? Everything is arriving BUT the mobo due to the e-tailers cancelling the orders...wait or build a cheap amd solution in the meantime?
 
Is there a chance this problem exists to some degree on the previous generation chipset? I would assume a SATA controller would be mostly regurgitated from one generation to the next, especially since the problem lies with 3.0Gbps ports.

The reason I'm asking is because at work we have had on two occasions now, unexplainable drive "failures" on some of Intel's previous generation motherboards, more like timeouts until the point where the OS gives up. Swapping hard drives never fixed the problem, nor did swapping power supplies. After some reboots, the systems would boot fine. Other times it would boot only to have drive read timeouts and crash.

Could be totally unrelated, but the symptoms would seem to match up to this SATA bug.

The issue is the transistor in question is actually not even used by Cougar Point, but carried over from previous designs, and it isn't supposed to be used. However because of a design oversight the transistor can become active.
 
I'd guess that reasonable people are waiting, while some people are panic-returning their stuff. But maybe that is a mischaracterization colored by my personal rational approach to the situation.

I'm way too lazy to disassemble my entire build, move the parts back over from the new system I just built with my X58 board, and return my SB parts on the odd chance my BLU-RAY drive can't be read. I'll wait to see what happens as well.
 
I'd guess that reasonable people are waiting, while some people are panic-returning their stuff. But maybe that is a mischaracterization colored by my personal rational approach to the situation.

I wouldn't quite put it that way, there are very rational reasons to consider returning to the retailer while you currently can. For instance -

RMA -
We do not know yet how the RMA process will be handled, this could be something as smooth as a no questions asked advanced replacement situation or having to prove your ports have indeed failed while waiting for a long turn around time for a refurb board

- shipping fees, who will be paying for these?
- shipping times, the turnaround time could be quite long
- shipping issues (lost, damages, etc.)
- will you get a new board? refurb (possible issues)? repaired (quality of repair)?
- will you have to show that your ports indeed have failed before RMA?

Resale value of the board, a lot of people do resale to upgrade more frequently

Unknown Problems -
Although the claim is that the issue will only cause a port failure in the long, can it be said for certain it will not impact your data or the drives?

Required Functionality -
Many people do require the functionality of the 4 ports, so simply disabling is not an option.
Likewise an add in card solution is not without drawbacks.
Who knows if you need the 4 ports in the future.

Differing ownership lengths -
Some people have mentioned that you would not even own this mobo anymore 12 months down the line, however that to me is not an accurate statement. I would say many people would still like to use there systems if not resell it at that point, not just simply trashing it at 12 months to stay on the "bleeding edge."


My actual advice to people though would be not to do rush returns at this point if they are not pressured to by deadlines. Get the information you need and then evaluate your options. Also hold off your return as long as possible until the mobo manufactures announce how they will handle the situation. If you do return it now you could not be able to upgrade until April if not later even.
 
I'm way too lazy to disassemble my entire build, move the parts back over from the new system I just built with my X58 board, and return my SB parts on the odd chance my BLU-RAY drive can't be read. I'll wait to see what happens as well.

Pretty much my feeling also.

We ordered the parts for a new system for my wife on Sunday, including the MSI board that [H] reviewed and gave gold rating on. Newegg shipped them Monday AM (we got the notice pretty early in the day), and we've no notice they pulled the board or anything, so I THINK I'm getting all the parts for the system.

I'll put it together, putting the two hard drives on Sata 0 and 1, and the optical on a port from the Marvell controller, so I will not have anything on the potentially 'bad' sata ports.

I'll talk to newegg and/or MSI about the RMA in a few days once things have cooled down. I'm pretty much hoping we can arrange a cross-swap so the system will only be down for the amount of time it takes me to swap the boards out.
 
When I woke up to this story today I was so upset because I just got my SB build up and running on my Asus P67 pro board. Now that I found out it's related to the sata3gb ports I can sleep alittle easier. I'm by no means a power user when it comes to storage and devices, I have one optical drive, a harddrive for data, and a SSD for OS. With no plans to need anything further. I'm able to use everything without even touching the problem ports.

I sort of feel in a way lucky if you can call it that. I have a SB up and working with a possible minor flaw that I will probably never even care about, and others who wanted to build a SB build will now have to wait possibly months for production of boards to ramp up again....
 
A bigger thing to think about is what is this going to do to the supply of motherboards for system builders. I'm sure a substantial portion of capacity was (and has been for the last month or two) devoted to cranking out 1155 boards using the Cougar Point chipset. Now all of that supply is headed largely for the boneyard. Hell there's probably whole portions of containers on ships right now that are just going to get what amounts to 'return to sender' treatment shortly after the can hits the dock.

MB makers are probably retooling lines right now that were making 1155 product to go back to older Intel standards, or making AMD based boards. But it's going to take a month or so for the results of whatever shift the makers do, to hit store shelves and be available in the pipeline. Meanwhile the entire portion of the market pipeline that was occupied by 1155 product has just effectively vanished.

Meanwhile anyone wanting to get a system is going to have to use older Intel MB designs or an AMD based system. and the supply of those is going to dwindle pretty quickly I'd think. Some of the demand for new systems is perhaps elastic and will wait for a few months for new SB product, but a lot of it won't be elastic at all, those folks are going to want systems 'right now' and that means older intel series, or AMD.. All that demand will be going against a reduced supply.

So for the next month or so we're going to see some level of scarcity. I doubt we are going to see too many special deals, or a lot of discounting.

On the processor side we see something that's similar in terms of the supply of gen1 Core designs and to a degree AMD product. Product for which there is now 'prolonged' demand instead of people switching over to SB stuff. There's going to be a bunch of SB chips there, but nothing to put them in, and unlike MB's those are not going 'back' anywhere. So we're likely to see a bit of a glut of SB chips, especially considering, how attractive do they need to make the price to get someone to buy the chip now, with nothing to put it in (or even test if it's good and not DOA?) instead of waiting till they have a motherboard. One wonders how rapidly AMD will respond, and if Intel will re-tool or otherwise adjust their output to lay off SB parts for a while in favor of more Gen1 Core chips instead.

Will we see shortages of AMD and Gen1-Core designs? for both chips and motherboards? Will we see amazing bargains on SandyBridge chips either now or once the rev2 1155 motherboards hit? how scarce will 1155 MB's be when they arrive given the numbers that will need to be devoted to RMA's etc.

Gonna be interesting times folks..
 
Sell stock now.

well better to sell it today than yesterday I suppose..

still it's within a few percent of a three month high, so I suppose it's not that bad a time to sell, presuming you think you have a better place for that money.

Otherwise it doesn't look like the stock took much of hit outside of what happened within minutes of the announcement (which it gradually made up for during most of yesterday)
 
After this fiasco, it will be a long while before I upgrade my cpu/mobo to this mess that has been Sandy Bridge.

At this point I'll just have to be damn impressed with performance to pull the trigger, and that looks like it's going to take some time judging by Intel's roadmap.
 
Jesus, some people are acting as if they woke up and their entire system was on fire...

I'm just going to wake for the RMA process to take place. If it is true at only 5-10% will ever really see this then I not to worried. If not I'll just use the marvell ports on my p8p67..

BTW is there any performance difference between the marvell and intel sata's?
 
Newegg sent out an email.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you. Newegg has recently become aware of a design issue that is affecting recent models of Intel Sandy Bridge platform motherboards. We are working with Intel to identify the exact nature of this problem.

As always, Newegg remains 100% committed to our customers' total satisfaction. In keeping with our commitment to our customers, we are extending the return period for your motherboard by 90 days or until replacements become available from the manufacturer, whichever is greater. Intel expects to have a new revision of the P67 & H67 chipsets out around April, at which point first-run motherboards with this issue will need to be physically replaced in affected systems.

From a technical standpoint, the design issue can be bypassed fairly simply by not using the Serial ATA (SATA) ports that are affected. Your motherboard’s manual should identify your SATA ports by number, and at a minimum you should see ports 0-5 (6 ports in total) listed. Ports 0 and 1 are Sata Rev. III (6Gbps), and do not appear to be affected by this problem. Ports 2-5 are SATA Rev. II (3Gbps) and should not be used. For a thorough explanation of this hardware work-around, please refer to our video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJcE2alQPvY

If you choose to use the hardware work-around option, there is no need to contact us at this time. We have your information on record and will email you as soon as the replacements become available. If you would like to discuss this with our tech community or read up on the latest updates, please visit our EggXpert forum:
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/682006.aspx

If none of the above options are suitable to your needs and you wish to return the board at this time for a full refund, please email us at [email protected] and include your sales order number so we can help you out with your return.

If you have any concerns, please contact Newegg Customer Service for further information and assistance.

Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,

Your Newegg.com Customer Service Team


Now my question would be if i use the motherboard in the meantime would they honor the return?
 
Newegg sent out an email.




Now my question would be if i use the motherboard in the meantime would they honor the return?

I would hope so, since they sent me the same email and I've been using mine for a little over a week now. Really cool of Newegg I have to say. Not only are they going to extend their exchange warranty so we can get a new revised board but they are going to tell us when the new boards become available to do it.
 
Hmm, my Asus "Sabretooth" just showed up from Newegg today, and so did their Sandy Bridge email. ;)

So, with Newegg's policy in their email, I can go ahead and install it, and when revised boards are available Newegg will do an exchange... am I reading that correct? If so, awesome, I'd rather go through them than through Asus customer service.
 
Hmm, my Asus "Sabretooth" just showed up from Newegg today, and so did their Sandy Bridge email. ;)

So, with Newegg's policy in their email, I can go ahead and install it, and when revised boards are available Newegg will do an exchange... am I reading that correct? If so, awesome, I'd rather go through them than through Asus customer service.

Thats what its looking like. I think Intel is forking over the cash to make this happen because it really is easier to do this through a retailer since they are better suited to handle the customer service issues than the OEMs.

I was planning on using my board anyway now im actually pretty happy about the situation. My only question is about data loss. Everything i have read has been pretty adamant that its not data loss its performance issues and eventual failure. I would like some confirmation on this, maybe the [H] guys could look into it?
 
Hmm, my Asus "Sabretooth" just showed up from Newegg today, and so did their Sandy Bridge email. ;)

So, with Newegg's policy in their email, I can go ahead and install it, and when revised boards are available Newegg will do an exchange... am I reading that correct? If so, awesome, I'd rather go through them than through Asus customer service.

Excatly. Intel has deep pockets so no worry here. If this was AMD well....yeah.

Now my question would be if i use the motherboard in the meantime would they honor the return?

Yes. These boards will be recycled or sent abck to OEMs. Why would they deny defective boards.
 
Newegg sent out an email.

Now my question would be if i use the motherboard in the meantime would they honor the return?

Did you Read the mail? specifically the part that started with "If you choose to use the hardware work-around option"

It was pretty clear to me, that they are saying you have the choice to go ahead and use it, (but don't use those ports) and they will contact you once they have replacements..

or if you don't want to use it, contact them for a return.

I got the same mail, and I have to say Kudo's to NewEgg for how they are handling this by extending exchange warranty until exchange parts are available.

Hopefully when the time for exchange comes they will cross-ship so I'm not down for a week if I don't want to overnight the old board back to them.
 
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