14 DAY TRIAL // Intel's recently announced design error that affects the SATA 3Gbps ports found inside the company's 6-series motherboard chipsets seems to have hurt the company even more than previously thought as Newegg, one of the largest computer hardware retailers in North America, has pulled all Sandy Bridge CPUs and motherboards from their online store.
This move will surely have a great impact on Intel's sales as users that wanted to build a Sandy Bridge system are now forced to look elsewhere for the required parts or choose a different platform all together.
The first reports about Newegg starting to pull off Sandy Bridge CPUs and LGA 1155 motherboards started appearing shortly after Intel made official the press release announcing that the company has stopped shipping 6-series chipsets.
Not so long after that, PC Perspective has found out that no Sandy Bridge CPUs or P67/H67-based motherboards are available for purchase from Newegg.
A quick search, proved PC Perspective's findings to be accurate, as no LGA 1155 products are listed in the online store at this time.
As we previously reported, the bug is caused by 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.
Fortunately, the problem doesn't affect the two SATA 6Gbps ports as these are controlled by a different PLL.
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.
This is scheduled to arrive in mid March, Maingear stating that it will start replacing the motherboards found inside their systems on March 17.