14 DAY TRIAL // Asus has just released an official response detailing their approach regarding the products affected by the SATA bug discovered in Intel's Cougar Point chipsets, users who have bought such goods having the option to return their products for a swap or sales return.
This covers all the products that are based on 6-series chipsets, including desktop and workstation motherboards, desktops, barebone systems and laptops.
For starters, the company has halted all shipments of current Sandy Bridge-based products in the all distribution and retail channels.
“Acting on our philosophy and promise of inspiring innovation and persistent perfection, we've created a comprehensive response to this development to safeguard the best interest of Asus customers around the world.
“We will provide total warranty services to maximize computing and usability, as each Asus product is delivered with an uncompromising quality pledge.
“This includes the hassle-free return and/or replacement of all affected Asus products,” reads the company's statement regarding the matter.
As Asus points out in its press release, only the 3Gbps SATA ports driven by the Cougar Point chipset are affected by this issues, so the 0 and 1 SATA 6Gbps ports can still be used without suffering from any performance loss.
In addition, a large number of Asus motherboards come with third-party controllers that provide two or even four other SATA ports that are not affected by Intel's chipset design flaw.
As we previously reported, the cause of the bug is in one of the transistors in the 3Gbps PLL clocking tree which was provided with a too high voltage when the PCH was designed.
This resulted in a higher than expected leakage current that can increase over time, leading to the failure of the four 3Gbps ports found inside the P67/H67 chipsets.
To resolve the issue, Intel has decided to remove the voltage delivered to the problematic transistor all together, thus requiring a new metal spin that will most probably result in a new revision of the chipset.
Once this new chipset becomes available, Asus, as well as Intel's other board partners, will start replacing the affected motherboards.
A list with the Asus products that use the Cougar Point chipset is available here, together with the phone number of your local service hotline.