I7 Sandy Bridge Recall

[idata]

So i just purchased the sandy bridge i7 1155 and know im finding out their is a recall

One page says sandy bridge is not affected, but another page uses the terminology that the cougar point with sandy bridge is being recalled

I am really CORNFUSED, PLEASE Help

Do I send it back or not????

[idata]

And where exactly would you find one of those boards in North America?

[idata]

You can't find one 'cuz there ain't any for sale. All the Sandy Bridge motherboards been pulled out of the market. It's costly for retailers to sell motherboards with faulty chipsets.

If there's no motherboard then how can you make a CPU work? You have to have a motherboard for the CPU. It's no rocket science. This makes a CPU non-usable.

I have a Sandy Bridge CPU inside my drawer. I can't use it 'cuz I can't find a motherboard for it.

Intel really fu---- things up. They just want to make money & release a chipset that's not been tested completely. This massive recall is the end result.

[idata]

True, I agreed with Cheaptrick. I think Intel didn't test properly all hard disk both SATA2 & SATA3 and Flash USB 2.0 USB 3.0 are Full times test. Until successfully, Intel Test team will signed to release new products to sale market.

I believe hundred company bought Intel chipset were builded their design motherboard, Then Intel recalled Sandy faulty. Many company feel not happy and destroyed their design motherboard cost is blow away !!

So, waste of billion dollar write off of Sandy Chipset. SHAME Intel.

WAKE UP NEED TEST FIRST ....BEFORE SALE MARKET.......THINK & RESPONIBLE !

[DSilv11]

WizardMasterNZ,

Having worked in this field for 28 years, I could go into the component qualification process used by Intel and other component manufactures. the thousands of hours of computer model simulations, hundreds of hours of physical and functional testing with includes testing at voltages and temperatures beyond anything a customer is likely to ever do to a system. In each step of the design process,Intel and others gives the major OEM vendors samples to conduct there own quality and suitability testing to insure the components meet their requirements.

The results:

No one found the ONE bad transistor out of the nearly BILLION on the board prior to launch or the chip would never have launched.

Went the failure was discovered, Intel acted decisively to halt shipments and fix the problem. I am sure this decision was not popular with some vendors who would accept a 5% over three years failure rate.So far in all my researching, I know of maybe 1 case where a field failure may have occurred (unconfirmed). It is not popular with what appears to be a very tiny number of folks on this forum who want they new toys now!, and are unwilling to either return their "unusable" components or wait 45 days to get versions that do not have the issue or to use what they have until the new units are available.

All the updates and posting I have read indicate that Intel has allocated $700,000,000 to the vendors (who are Intel's customers in this case, not the end users who are posting on this forum that Intel provides to help all users) to fix this issue. I have yet to hear one rant that "_______ who manufactured, tested and warranties this board should have found this problem" The $700M cost to Intel does not include Intel's loss of revenues of chipset, boards and processors.

Sure, Intel and the mother board vendors could have tested more, but when your testing are passing, what would you like retested?

I am very glad to see Intel standing up and taking the reproducibility to fix the problem and turn out a quality product.

The fact that it will cost Intel a bundle is only right since it is their component failing. The confidence I get in Intel products knowing that when Intel finds a problem will keep me on the Intel product line for quite awhile to come. Just because other companies don't fix their mistakes, do not believe they don't make mistakes.

OK, off my soap box. I have a red ring of death to go try to fix, but I am done posting to this thread. Anyone else who would like my 2 cents worth on an issue, please start your own thread and I will be glad to help out.

[idata]

I understood Doc_SilverCreek... Sound is incredible !

You believe that most first time a faulty Sandy chipset in the world !....

Keep try it again !

[idata]

Doc_SiverCreek said - "Asus Maximus IV Extreme has & uses the SATA II ports so the limit of availability would not apply".

This I think is the funniest response I got from this site. I doubt if the Doc really knows what he's talking about or just being silly.

By the way Asus Maximus IV Extreme is a Sandy Bridge motherboard. It's part of the recall. It got both the SATA2 & SATA3 ports in it just like the other Sandy Bridge motherboards being recalled.

[idata]

There are no recorded cases yet. How bad is the problem. Is it definatly going to happen to your system given time? Is there any point of waiting until something happens. Don't fix it unless it's broken, as my Dad use to say I've got a pre-order of the G73-SW waiting for pick up. I can't wait two months for this laptop. This has really stuffed me work wise. I'm going to read a bit more about it. If it ony effects SATA 2-5 that would be the Blue Ray player? No?? Don't really want to pick up a system with a bug. If it starts to play up down the track Asus said today it would be covered in the warranty. As I understand it, it may never play up or is it just a matter of time?

[idata]

Hi...A bit of advice,if you are going to wait for around two more months for this to be delivered,you'll will most probably be safe...By that time the new chipset would have been out for around a month or more and I doubt whether they will still sell you that mobile that you ordered based on the old chipset that is supposedly going to be fixed up and Intel are now making new cougar point chipsets anyway...Although I do believe that some people in the busines of PC system makers may not care and just give you an old mainboard with the old faulty chipset not repaired and you could be one of those people that only use your mobile for a year or so and just be unlucky enough not to notice any faults with your new product...Also some people may blame themselves for no good reason when a fault does occur,because of what other information people have told them in the past...

[idata]

Listy, the problem would affect any device you have connected to the SATA 2 ports, whether a BD/DVD Optical drive, SSD, or HDD. Of course with an optical drive, if you were simply playing a movie or music disk, the video or music would screw up or not appear. If you were loading a program or OS with that drive when it failed, the results would be much worse of course. Also, saving files to a HDD or SSD when the SATA 2 port(s) fails would likely result in losing the file or the file being corrupted and useless.

You may use the SATA 3 ports on any device, Optical drive, HDD, etc. Although Optical drives only run at SATA 1 speeds, that does not matter. I'm not familiar with the layout of the SATA ports on these mother boards, it seems you are saying the SATA 3 ports are numbers 1 and 6 (or 0 and 5 if that is how they are identified.)

Hopefully what Intel has said about this problem will be true, that the H67 or P67 chip will not fail until it has been used for a few years, and then in less than say 25% of the chips (Intel is saying between 5% and 15% at the moment.) Your laptop may not ship now because of this problem, and it will likely be more than two months before PCs are shipped with functional chipsets. I've read that the chips won't be available to the manufactures until April. We will all just have to wait and see.

[idata]

My PC store have said I can come and pick it up today. When they finally get the new chip sets here I can go and have it changed over. I guess you would want it changed before the two year warranty expires. Maybe it's not even a warrant issue. I have limited knowledge of the SATA connections. Would I be wrong to assume that the HDD is connected to SATA 1 and the ther optical drives are connected to 2 and so on. I can't wait so I either buy a different unit or take this unit today and take it to Asus in three months when the new chipsets arrive. I'm trying to establish where the new chipsets will be installed. Sent back to Asus overseas or being a simple fix, they would be fixed locally? The problem is not a terminal one so I am leaning towards picking it up today and having the part replaced down the track. Do you think this is the wrong way to go???

[DSilv11]

You would have to check the motherboards physical connections or maybe a block diagram to see were everything is connected.

The HDD's will likely be connected to the Gen3 SATA ports which don't have any issue since that's the only way you can get 6g SATA.

The other ports will only give you gen 2 speed (3G) so may be connected to the optical drives (which most only run at gen 1 speed (1.5g) anyway).

So unless your going to load up a bunch of HDD's, your worst case (with the ~5% +/- chance) is the gen 2 links might degrade to gen 1 (1.5 g) speed (which is what the optical drive will be running anyway) and could eventually (sometime around beyond 3 or more years from now.) fail.

Like I say earlier, most user will never see a failure if they do nothing, but the guys will lots of HDD attached are the most likely to have issues.

If your a more "normal" computer user with one HDD and 1 optical drive, you can connect to both the Gen 3 ports bypass the problem completely.

The problem that comes in for users is is it worth getting it fixed later?

I once got a recall notice on my new car's airbags because they might not detect a "little person" (< 50lb) sitting in the driver seat.

They need to remove the dash and steering wheel to fix it. -- I am over 6 ft and close to 275 lb, You know, my car still has that airbag issue.

It was not worth having it fixed since it has no material impact to how I will ever use the car.

This is similar. Intel is upfront with the problem and are supplying the replacements to the board manufacturers. It will not be a "fix" in some local shop where the change the chip. The mother board vendors will work with Intel to set-up a replacement plan. BGA rework is not something that you neighbor repair center can do, so I would hazard the guess that the repairs will be a mother board replacement most likely by shipping your old board or system back to the vendor. Each vendor would then cover the problem based on their own internal policies for repair and replacement.

The choice is up to you,

Are you OK with maybe not having all the sata ports (do nothing), or do you want to wait to get a board with the new chipset revision when it gets to the field. (at least 2 months maybe more since a lot of folks will be waiting for them) or use it now and replace it down the line if it develops a problem or you just feel like it then.

I would check with OEM vendors on the warrany question. I can't see any vendor giving you a problem if the board was still in warranty (since Intel is picking up the bill). If it is out of warranty, I don't know.

[idata]

Listy, the potentially faulty chip cannot be replaced locally by anyone without very specialized equipment and would need to be tested, etc, that will never happen. I've read that it will be cheaper to replace the entire mother board rather than replace the chip. I doubt that any manufacture will be replacing the defective chips whatsoever, given what I have read about this.

For example, Gigabyte is telling their customers that they can return their affected motherboards for a refund, or take/send it back to the retailer to exchange it for a new one with a new chip when they are available. They did not offer an option to repair the motherboard. But according to the articles about this issue, the manufactures like Gigabyte or ASUS, etc, will not be getting the new chips until April. Then they will begin producing the new ones and shipping them, so when will that happen? May, June, July, who knows?

I think you should get your laptop now and use it until ASUS is ready to replace your motherboard, or whatever they decide to do. Ask your PC store about that and watch the news about this on the Internet and on ASUS's web site. Given what Intel has said and is doing about this issue, you should at least get a new motherboard eventually. When and by whom it will be installed in your laptop is unknown yet, since doing that is not easy on laptops and must be done at the factory or by a trained technician. Due to that, ASUS might even decide to give you a new laptop. You do not need to worry about your laptop being under its warranty. but I would be careful with it, if it looks all beat up and dirty when you bring it in, they might not be happy about that.

Since your PC is a laptop, the number of available SATA ports is different then desktop PCs, yours will very likely have less than the six ports discussed in the articles, since the majority of laptops can only contain one HDD/SSD and one Optical Drive. We can assume nothing about which ports ASUS used in your laptop, you will need to verify that with them. It is possible that they did not even use the SATA 2 ports, but only ASUS or your PC store can verify that for you, unless that information is in the manual or on ASUS's web site.

I would not worry about the SATA ports if I were you, I would just try to find out what ASUS plans to do about this issue with their laptops. You can get your new laptop and use it now, knowing that the problem will be taken care of some time in the near future.

[idata]

Stop trying to give out advice parsec and checkout Cpt.Dogfruit after riskss69 had a post up proving that these mainboards are not to be trusted and in fact neither are you anymore...In fact I will remember riskss69 and his posts and mention them to you all the time...

[idata]

I start off by saying thank you that was very informative and I'm certainly leaning to your way of thinking regarding the air bag theory Just hope you never have to use it. In a nutshell, because i got a bit lost with Gen3 SATA, 6g SATA, gen 2 speed (3G). This factory delivery computer with TWO HDD and 1 optical drive, so can I get the vendor to check if both HDDs are connected to Gen3 SATA 0-1 ports to bypass 'my' problem completely?

[idata]

Parsec, thank you also. I think I've got a fair understanding betwenn you and the Doc. I'm not going to be overclocking this thing, just doing some video encoding. I guess I just don't wantr to think that the HDD is slowing down. I back everthing up so I'm not really worried about failure. Unless it's out of the warranty period which in my experience it usally is. Just a day out. The 'to be picked up' laptop has two 500 HDD in it and a Blue Ray as an optical drive. Hoping at least one if not both HDD are connected to the SATA3 0-1, then there should be no dramas. If on the 5% chance that it does effect 'me'. Would 20% reduction in performance really effect the Blue Ray. I like your replacment synopsis. In three month I expect my laptop to be in brand new condition. So I should keep an eye on the Asus website and speak to the vendor to see what information they have revcieved from Intel.

[DSilv11]

You still have small chance that the optical drive SATA port might fail some time, but if that port fails you don't loose any data, You might get disk read errors on the optical drive, but for most folks the optical drive gets used so little, it would likely last much longer than the computer life.

I would make sure of the system warranty terms (most are about 3 years and they may have some stipulations concerning this issue) and many vendor will just give you a credit equal to the cost of the board which you then use to order whatever replacement board you like at that time. Of course desktop system release a new family about every 1 1/2 years, so if you wait 3 years to order a replacement, it might be hard to find a mother board that supports Sandy Bridge since it would be obsolete by then and you might just have to settle for yet another newer, faster and more powerful system. Just a thought.....

[idata]

Yeah Doc, that was exacxtly what I was thinking. If I want to watch a Blue Ray I would wany to drop the disk into my home system and I can't really see this optical drive being used that much. Your after-thought is an interesting one. Worth investigating.

[idata]

Well thank you Listy, that's very nice of you to say.

Your laptop sounds like a very nice one, with two 500GB drives and an Optical drive.

One question, I'm wondering if your laptop actually has one 1 Terabyte HDD that is partioned into two 500GB "logical" drives.

You can check that by going into the Device Manager, and then clicking on Disk Drives, and see how many entries you have. You won't see your Blu-Ray Optical drive there, just the storage drives. If you see two HDDs listed, then you have two.

If you only see one, you can double-click it and in the Properties window that appears, click on the Volumes tab, and then click Populate near the bottom. You will then see your drive letters, probably C and D. That is one 1 Terabyte HDD partioned into two 500 GB partitions.

Sorry if you know all of this, or are sure about having two HDDs, I am just not sure what model of Laptop you have, or how much of a PC geek you are.

Anyway, if you have one HDD or two, hopefully one or both are connected to the SATA 3 ports, which are not affected by the problem.

One other issue is, on laptop mother boards, we can't assume how many SATA ports of each type it has, since laptops generally have fewer than desktops. You can research this yourself, but please post the full model name and number of your laptop so we can hopefully find that information.

The laptop version (called Mobile or M) of these chipsets can support the same number of SATA connections as the desktop version, six in total, two SATA 3 and four SATA 2, but in laptops they don't use the same type of connectors for cables like desktops mother boards do. I am not sure how many of the possible six SATA ports your mother board will actually use, it is possible that all six are not available, due to the space restrictions in a laptop. Which is why we need to check that.

Message was edited by: parsec

[idata]

Sorry it has taken a few days to get back to you. We've had two floods and a cyclone 'yasi' to clean up from last week and other places not to far away are dealing with bushfires on the second anniversary of Black Saturday (176 died). I think we are having a mini armageddon.

Back to were we left off. The G73SW has dual HDD support for 2 x 500GB 7200rpm Hybrid Drive SSH. I wanted it this way so I could store a few movies and back up my system without clogging up the hard drive with useless data which in turn will slowing the system down. I am a bit of a geek but when I listen to you guy I realise how much I don't know about internal connections, voltage, resistors and some the terminology changes or is superseded just when I get my head around it. Without these forums I just would be a lot more ignorant. I don't really want to buy into it just to say I don't really understand George. That's probably me being ignorant again. I find these forums so helpful and appreciate the time you guys put in here, if you work for Intel or not and for that, I thank you. I can't remember what we use to do before we had access to these forums. Stay stupid or get on the phone. In regards to Intel, I think they have been very up front about it. What more can they do, but what they have done. Maybe they took a leaf out of NVIDIA's what not to do. Cover up just bites you on the arse later and a lot harder. Public finds out you knew and tried to cover it up, it just ends in tears and it takes the company years to win back the public confidence that your not dishonest. The entire model number is ASUS G73SW-FHD-TZ016V. Love to know how thay wired the SATA in regards to the HDD. Would really appreciate that. It's still sitting in the city waiting for me to pick it up and I'm being guided by you and what the Doc said.

[idata]

Listy, I noticed something that can help you, please check my thread in the link below. It's a tool that should identify if any of the HDDs used with a H67/P67 Cougar Point chipset mother board are connected to the SATA 2 ports. Please read my description in the thread:

/message/115361# 115361 http://communities.intel.com/message/115361# 115361

Please let me know what the results are, and if it works for you.

Yes, the Aussie's (correct?) have been hit with some nasty weather lately, good luck to you all! Where I am in a suburb of Chicago, we had about two feet of snow a week ago, and today it is 10F/-12C so it's lousy outside but at least not life threatening, unless you decide to go for a walk in your swimsuit.

And not to worry, it is very difficult to be a super PC nerd in all or even a few areas. It takes time and a good deal of studying to put a dent in all the different aspects of a PC's functioning. Since it is summer in Australia now (correct?), I'd be at the beach with (maybe...) my laptop, dodging sharks in the ocean and checking out all the young ladies... arghh, I hate winter!!!!!!

Message was edited by: parsec

[idata]

This is what I recieved back from the vendor;

Without having run the program, the intel (pardon the pun) I'm getting is that they're SATAII ports. No one is sure whether they're affected. Asus have announced that they're using old legacy drivers for the SATA ports on their boards which means they "may" not be affected. The lack of information is deafening.

So no definate answer so I sent back.

I can't find any information on what set-up they are using. Couldn't they just check the circuit wiring?? You didn't get a little curious about running a few Cougar chipsets through that program??

All I can find on the Asus-G73SW-FHD-TZ016V is that it has the Mobile Intel HM65 Express Chipset with a Core i7-2630QM (2.2GHz) and it effects the Q67 and QM67. I feel this is going to drag out and it maybe best to start shopping for another unit.