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Asus, Gigabyte To Replace All Sandy Bridge Boards

Posted by samzenpus on from the return-to-sender dept.

J. Dzhugashvili writes "In the wake of Intel's announcement that all existing Sandy Bridge chipsets have a bug that causes degraded Serial ATA performance, top-tier motherboard makers Asus and Gigabyte have made public statements regarding their return policy for affected boards. Asus is promising 'hassle-free return and/or replacement', while Gigabyte says owners of affected boards are entitled to a full refund or replacement—and it recommends that users seek refunds. Both companies are advising users to contact the original place of purchase to proceed. On a related note, Gigabyte has announced that new Sandy Bridge motherboards with bug-free chipsets will be available in volume in April."

28 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. More tech detail by FrankSchwab · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the chipheads, Anandtech has a good description of the underlying problem:
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug

    --
    And the worms ate into his brain.
    1. Re:More tech detail by icebike · · Score: 2

      Very good article.

      I wonder if the wisest thing would be to just sit on one of those board till April, especially if your board is not yet experiencing the slow down. The article linked above suggests this problem gets worse with age.

      But with replacement boards due in April I would opt for waiting. Of course some people can't/won't change out their own boards and warranty issues might not allow them to do so, but sending it back now gets you a refund, but you are still stuck without your computer.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  2. I'll take one! by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wouldn't it make more sense to offer some sort of a substantial rebate and a correctly functioning SATA raid PCI-E card? Some of these motherboards - that are clearly getting scrapped - were very fancy. This seems like a terrible waste, since those boards basically worked.

    1. Re:I'll take one! by gstrickler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      These motherboards will not be scrapped. The manufacturers have the tools and facilities to remove the defective chips and replace them. The defective chips may be scrapped, but the boards will be refurbished and used as replacement units.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    2. Re:I'll take one! by mewsenews · · Score: 3

      Handing out SATA cards would certainly be cheaper, but respectable companies repair or replace a product with defects.

    3. Re:I'll take one! by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 2

      Because there is a severe limit on PCI-e lanes on these chipsets. As it already stands, you are limited to two 8xPCI-e slots in use on the basic P67 chipset. On the H67 if you enable the internal CPU graphics, you are limited to one 8xPCI-e slot. That isn't much room left for a SATA controller card if someone plans on having a sound card or HD video capture card... This is also why on the higher end motherboards, they are including an additional bridge chip to expand the PCI-e lanes.

      --
      We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
    4. Re:I'll take one! by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 2

      Considering that AMD's Bulldozer is coming out in May (most likely), it might make more sense, if you haven't already bought Sandy Bridge, to wait and see how AMD's chips stack up.

    5. Re:I'll take one! by gstrickler · · Score: 3, Insightful

      First, you don't scrap a $100 motherboard over the labor cost of removing and replacing one component (which Intel is providing for free). I'll cost at most $10 to replace the chipset, probably less than $5. Add another $5-$10 for testing and packaging, and for under $20 cost to the manufacturer you have motherboard that you can sell for a whole lot more than $20.

      Second, these boards typically start upwards of $100 and go up to $300

      Third, at the very least, they'll cut the traces going to the 3Gb SATA ports and/or remove those ports, re-label the board with different model number, put on an updated BIOS that disables the 3Gb SATA, and sell them to a secondary market with only the 6Gb SATA ports active. These could be sold in markets were prices are lower, sold to a small clone vendor building cheap systems, or sold retail as "refurbished" at a discounted price.

      Anyway you look at it, most of these boards are not simply going to be scrapped.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    6. Re:I'll take one! by sexconker · · Score: 2

      These boards will be produced for long period of time

      So the 5 seconds between Intel's current socket and Intel's new, 100% incompatible, exactly-the-same socket is a "long period of time" now?

    7. Re:I'll take one! by multipartmixed · · Score: 2

      I don't know - if you've got, say, a million boards in the pipeline and you can fix them for $20 each then sell them for $60, it seems like there would be some money to be made.

      "Fix for $20" might seem unreasonable, but I don't think so, based on the economies of scale available to Asus and Gigabyte. They already have 100% of the requisite QA/QC ability, and access to cheap labour. I'm sure Intel will give them the chips for free.

      That said, the other poster's idea is more likely IMHO - re-badge the boards, rip off the defective ports, and sell them as-is.

      --

      Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
    8. Re:I'll take one! by Rudeboy777 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps, but many of these are not $100 motherboards. High-end P67 boards run in the $200-300 range.

      This also would not be a small scale refurb operation -- thousands of identical boards could be processed in an assembly-line fashion making this much more cost-effective than a single worker refurbishing whatever came in the mail that day.

      --

      From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc

    9. Re:I'll take one! by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 2

      Can they really desolder the chipset and solder on a new one, and do all this with acceptable reliability? These things are at least seven layer circuit boards. Do all the chipset pins even go through all the layers to make desoldering possible?

    10. Re:I'll take one! by Rockoon · · Score: 2

      The 8 core bulldozer is rumored to benchmark 1.5x faster than an i7-950 (as well as 1.5x the similarly performing Phenom II x6 1100T) .. this info was supposedly leaked a few days ago.

      Could be a fake, but I wouldn't be surprised given the PassMark numbers for the i7-950 (6346 @ $286), the Phenom II x6 1100T (6174 @ $260), and the i7-980X (10472 @ $1000)

      AMD is moving to the same process size that Intel has been enjoying, and a smaller process size usually means large performance increments (just as it did with Intel), AMD has been working on this one for a very long time and they havent redesigned their architecture since the athlon 64's, so I think there is a good chance that the rumors or more or less true. AMD will likely be offering a single chip that can attain 9000..10000 on PassMark, territory that Intel had an exclusive to on single-CPU systems this past year.

      The most important thing, tho, is price. If AMD drops these off at $300 like I suspect then Intel will have to seriously rethink its pricing strategy at the high end, but if AMD can't push them out for under $500 then Intel probably has nothing to worry about with its Sandy's pushing 9000+ PassMark's for less.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    11. Re:I'll take one! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      You have to have tight control of the rework temperatures and times, or you get intermetallic growth which hurts reliability. We verify all of our solder stations every eight hours using a calibrated thermocouple just to be safe. But yes, reworked solder joints can be very reliable.

      We make the electronics that go into certain very valuable aircraft. We do low-volume, high-mix production, with batch sizes as low as one board. Since it's hard to work out the kinks in a production process until you've built a few hundred or thousand boards, our units generally have as many as 14 defects on EACH UNIT. Most of those just need a quick touchup with a soldering iron, but we often have to replace ball-grid-array and pin-grid-array processors. The reworked units then go into production aircraft, and (knock on wood) function reliably for decades.

      Posting as AC for obvious reasons.

  3. amd is much better at pci-e by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 2

    Intels chips have limited pci-e lanes and you need to go to the high end i7 cpus just to get more then 20+DMI bus speed of 4 pcie lanes. For Sandy Bridge that may be a $400 cpu! + a high cost MB.

    AMD lets you USE ANY CPU in a AM3 board with chip set choice with better pci-e lane setups. 890FX has 38 + 4 SB link. 890GX and other 800's 22 + 4 SB link.

    790fx has 38 + 4 SB link lanes. 790X and 790GX has 22 + 4 SB link. 785G 20 + 4 SB link. 785E 22 + 4 SB link and most of the other 700 ones have the same.

  4. This is a good thing. by Even+on+Slashdot+FOE · · Score: 2

    If more companies replaced their defective products at their own expense, this would be a better world. And people would be more focused on making things work before they ship the product.

    1. Re:This is a good thing. by Shados · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is in the current world, a lot of companies go under if they do that.

      So you have:

      A) the companies that screw you over
      B)The companies that don't...oh wait, those went under.

      Ok, so you have A) the companies that screw you over. Thats it.

  5. Re:Why the recall...? by klashn · · Score: 2

    This was the policy for the FDIV bug. People found out that Intel would only replace it if they were using the CPU that uses the floating point unit extensively. Those users that didn't use it extensively still claimed that they would use it, and thats why there was a big fiasco. This time around... Fix it, get it over with...

  6. Cougar Point, not Sandy Bridge by pablodiazgutierrez · · Score: 4, Informative

    Cougar Point is a chipset (the set of circuits that normally come in a motherboard, separate from the CPU). Sandy Bridge is a family of processors. The announced problem is with the former, not the latter. A lot of tech news outlets are spreading the misinformation and causing quite a mess.

    --

    To do list for Windows
  7. Asus didn't handle the capacitor plague so well by bzipitidoo · · Score: 2

    Nobody did, that I know of.

    An Asus motherboard I bought many years ago worked fine for about 4 years, then over a period of 2 weeks started spontaneously rebooting or locking up at ever shorter intervals until the computer was unusable. (As I recall, it was a P4S333. I put a 1.7 MHz Pentium 4 in it.) I saw some capacitors had leaked on the motherboard.

    Thought I'd see what Asus had to say about it, perhaps offer a replacement or upgrade at a prorated discount, or something. They told me to get lost. Motherboard was much too old to be in warranty. Businesses feel that they are excused the minute the magic warranty period expires, despite cases like this that are clearly the result of a flawed product. I didn't really expect any better, and to be fair the board was too obsolete to be worth messing with, but still, it was annoying.

    Friend of mine who is good with a soldering pencil replaced the capacitors for me, and the board worked fine again. Still works fine today. Tried replacing capacitors on other afflicted boards. Sometimes that worked, and sometimes not.

    --
    Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
  8. Re:What About Intel's Own Motherboards? by base3 · · Score: 2

    AMD it is for the next build. Thanks for the info.

    --
    One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
  9. I've mostly bought AMD over the years but... by Ironhandx · · Score: 2

    I really have mostly supported AMD over the years. A lot times it comes down to the fact that they generally have the best price/performance in my/others budget range(most computers I build are in the $1000-1500 range) when I'm building computers and I also have a certain comfort level with them in that I've scrapped a lot fewer AMD cpus than Intel ones.

    However, I have to say. I'm really impressed with how Intel is handling this. There must be a nice bit of extra support for board vendors as well, especially with the huge loss numbers they're predicting and how good the board manufacturers are being with this situation.

    This could have been a really bad PR event. Instead I think I might be buying Intel when its time to upgrade again in 6-12 months.

  10. Re:What About Intel's Own Motherboards? by FrankSchwab · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Frankly, I think that sounds like an excellent response from Intel. Did you expect them to send a car right over with a replacement Mobo?

    They just announced the problem. They don't have 8 million replacement chips, or 8 million replacement motherboards in house. If they waited until they did have that many, somebody would bitch about them delaying the announcement.

    The rep answered your questions truthfully, told you that the exchanges would be handled through the retailer, and suggested that your board will probably work just fine until a replacement is available. Again, what more did you expect?

    Angry? Sure you can be angry. Someone sold you something that's defective, and that's causing you problems. They can't immediately make it right, and that's going to cause you more problems. Suck it up - it happens everywhere, all the time, and is part of life.

    --
    And the worms ate into his brain.
  11. That is what is being recommended by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    Newegg has a video out talking about it and they run down how you can still use the board, if you only have two devices just use the first couple ports and so on. Basically you can hold on to your board till the new ones come, then get a replacement.

    The refund policy seems to just be to keep people happy. Some people look for any excuse to flip their lid and will do it over something like this and demand a refund. Intel headed all that off and told all suppliers to offer refunds, no questions asked, and Intel would reimburse them.

    Personally if I were in the situation of owning a board, I'd just buy a SATA controller, since I have 4 harddrives, and then get a replacement board when they come out. The $30ish dollars would be worth it to just keep the system.

    However Intel is offering people choices in what they want. Want a refund right now? No problem.

    I think they learned their less on from the FDIV bug. They want to make sure nobody can accuse them of not dealing with the problem. Keep your board, get a replacement later, send it in get a refund now, they'll do whichever remedy makes you happy.

  12. Oh stop looking for reason to be angry by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I swear, some people are just looking for reasons to be pissed off.

    So, Intel has offered you the ability to either get a refund now, or a replacement board later. What's more, to get your refund you don't have to deal with them, you deal with the people that sold you the board, Intel will reimburse them. Like if it is Newegg just contact them and they'll issue you a full refund RMA, no questions asked, for any product that contained a 67 chipset, mobo, laptop, etc.

    You cannot be provided with a replacement right now, because there are none to be had, they are being made. However if you'd rather not get a refund and use the system as it is, that's fine you can do that and then get a replacement in a month or two when they are out on the market.

    Seems to me as though they've done everything they can to rectify the situation. They are fixing the problem and everyone gets a free replacement when the fixed units are out. If you are unwilling or unable to wait, then you can send back the stuff for a full refund right now.

    If this doesn't satisfy you I see only one of two situations:

    1) You want a fixed chip right now. That means you are an idiot, expecting you can have something before it is physically possible.

    2) You want Intel to issue you a refund directly, rather than the retailer because you feel that is a better "punishment" or something. In that case you are just being unreasonable. You can get your refund, just talk to the place that sold it. Hell you'll get it faster that way.

    Seriously, I fail to see the big deal. There is a fuckup, they are doing what they can to fix it. Nothing else can be done that I can see.

  13. Re:What About Intel's Own Motherboards? by batkiwi · · Score: 2

    So is your vendor refusing to support you? If not, what's your problem? If your car has a recall, do you take it to the dealer (who is likely his own business), or call up corporate HQ and demand they ship you the new part?

    They are using vendors as the channel of distribution. There's nothing wrong with that, and genrally ensures everyone gets served more quickly.

  14. Re:Take the news with a grain of sand by Stormwatch · · Score: 2

    Perhaps, but it was designed by Intel's developement center in Haifa, Israel, codenamed "gesher" - hebrew for "bridge". They changed it because there was a political party with that same name there.

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    Circumcision is child abuse.
  15. Re:What About Intel's Own Motherboards? by willy_me · · Score: 2

    Intel never sold you the motherboard so they can not offer a refund. I do not see why this is surprising. If I purchased an Apple computer from a local retailer I would not be able to return it directly to Apple for a refund. This situation is no different. Note that I could send it back to Apple for repairs/replacement - just not for a refund.

    Now if Intel had a fix available they would probably offer replacement motherboards - but no such fix is available. Their customer support told you of your options - return for a refund from the retailer or wait for a replacement. If you wait for a replacement, only use SATA 0,1 in order to avoid the problem. Considering that there is currently no fix, the customer service is perfectly acceptable.