14 DAY TRIAL // Just as all the other major computer manufacturers, Lenovo has also published an official response regarding the recent SATA bug found in Intel's Cougar Point chipset, that is used to power all of the Sandy Bridge products available on the market, including notebooks and desktop PCs.
For starters, the company has stopped shipping all products with an Intel 6-series chipset and has established a special service program that will deal with replacing the affected products.
“Following Intel’s announcement confirming a design issue in their recently released support chip, the Intel 6 Series, Lenovo will be putting in place a special service program that will enable customers who purchased affected PCs to receive a system board replacement free-of-charge, as soon as those parts become available,” reads a response posted online by Mark Hopkins, program manager at Lenovo Social Media.
More details regarding the service program will be available on the Lenovo support page at a later date.
Although Intel's Cougar Point chipset made its way into a large series of Lenovo products, the company states that only a limited number of Sandy Bridge desktops and notebooks have been shipped until now.
Customers who aren't satisfied with the system board replacement program could also opt for an alternative remedy, including a full refund, but Lenovo's press release is rater vague in this area.
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 Cougar Point chipsets.
Intel has informed all its partners as well as its customers about the bug on January 31.
An article detailing how you can see if your Sandy Bridge motherboard, desktop or notebook is affected by the issue is available here.