News - Retailers respond to Intel’s Sandy Bridge woes

[HEXUS]

Some retailers pull boards and CPUs, others stress caution and the rest carry on as normal

Read more.

[Steve A]

We are in the process of highlighting the issue in the "category" pages of the affected products

[ca197]

Ebuyer shipped my motherboard yesterday just before this news broke. Not really sure I should build the new system before swapping out. :-(

[BullDogg]

Ebuyer shipped my motherboard yesterday just before this news broke. Not really sure I should build the new system before swapping out. :-(

Thing is, you'll probably be waiting months for a new board. The error only shows up (if at all) after quite a long time (thus why Intel only just found it), so I'd go ahead and build. If you're really worried, use only SATA ports 0 and 1 only, since they aren't affected.

Once they issue a recall or repair scheme, you can relatively easily swap it out. Sure, it's a pain, but it means you get Sandy Bridge goodness now, not in April.

[Champman99]

As I understand it (just in the process of swapping drives around myself in my built P8P67 Pro machine), you can also use the 6GB ports, hence there are 4 unaffected ports you can use without fear?

[MSIC]

Regarding the announcement from Intel, I find it quite surprising that this occurred, but have to take my hat off for them for addressing this 'no-win scenario' in the only sensible way, and taking it on the chin.
Clearly no winners in this though.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

if i was u i would send the sb back to ebuyer and rgab a 1366 socket build thats proven, tried and tested and as fast as a SB setup

[Nelviticus]

As I understand it (just in the process of swapping drives around myself in my built P8P67 Pro machine), you can also use the 6GB ports, hence there are 4 unaffected ports you can use without fear?

Nope, ports 0 and 1 ARE the 6GB ports. So you can only safely use two ports: the other four will give you problems eventually.

[ca197]

Nope, ports 0 and 1 ARE the 6GB ports. So you can only safely use two ports: the other four will give you problems eventually.

The ASUS has 2 3GB ports off a non Intel controller (Can't remember who makes it). So it has 4 out of 8 ports unaffected.

[aidanjt]

Clearly no winners in this though.

Bit of a win for AMD though, at Intel's expense.

[kalniel]

Bit of a win for AMD though, at Intel's expense.

Yes and no - at first glance yes, you'd think people looking for reliability will head towards AMD, but it's specifically early adopters that have been bitten here (thanks to the speed of Intel's response). That group of people are likely to be wary of any early adoption now, regardless of make, so AMD's early take-up could also be affected negatively.

[aidanjt]

Yeah, hence why I said 'a bit'.

[dangel]

I'm fortunate in that the four affected intel ports on my board can be avoided by using the other two controllers (each with two 6GB ports) for the time being. Since I have four drives, two in RAID, two not and no DVD drive i'm OK for the time being once I jump over. It's been said this is a heat/time problem that slowly worsens over an extended period of time - so it's hard to say how soon you might be affected, particularly on a PC tower with good cooling.

[Terbinator]

if i was u i would send the sb back to ebuyer and rgab a 1366 socket build thats proven, tried and tested and as fast as a SB setup

If you drop £800 on the CPU perhaps.

[Tpyo]

Erm... So if I had bought an SB mb and built a PC around it with an OEM copy of Windows, They'll swap sort the problem with the motherboard, but what about Microsoft complaining I've installed the OEM software on a different machine already?

[dangel]

Erm... So if I had bought an SB mb and built a PC around it with an OEM copy of Windows, They'll swap sort the problem with the motherboard, but what about Microsoft complaining I've installed the OEM software on a different machine already?

Not a problem - probably Windows doesn't notice the new board (after all it's the same thing) but even if it does you ring microsoft, explain replacement and they let you reactivate. In fact, in reality you could pop a whole different MB in there and they'd still let it go.