14 DAY TRIAL // Together with the likes of Asus, Gigabyte or MSI, Zotac has also announced that it has begun shipping a revised version of the H67-ITX WiFi motherboard that relies on Intel's recently released B3 stepping of the Cougar Point chipset.
To differentiate the revised version of the motherboard from older B2 designs, Zotac has changed its part number to H67ITX-C-E.
“Zotac values our customers and are doing everything we can to ensure customers only receive enhanced H67-ITX WiFi motherboards.
“To eliminate confusion, we have assigned the enhanced model with a new SKU - H67ITX-C-E,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director at Zotac International.
This is the only motherboard in Zotac's lineup to be affected by the Cougar Point SATA bug as the maker didn't release other models for socket LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge processors.
Just as its name implies, the H67-ITX WiFi is built on top of the Intel H67 Express chipset, features a mini-ITX form factor and comes equipped with all sort of high-end features such as USB 3.0 support and 802.11n WiFi connectivity.
In addition, users also get a PCI Express x16 slot, a dual full-length DDR3 memory sockets, dual 6Gbps SATA and four 3Gbps SATA ports, an eSATA connector as well as DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI video outputs.
Intel's SATA design error, that made its way into the Cougar Point chipset, came to light on January 31 when Intel released a notice regarding how the bug affected almost all Sandy Bridge motherboards shipped until then.
At the heart of the problem is one of the transistors in the 3Gbps PLL clocking tree that was provided with too high of a voltage, resulting a leakage current which, over time, can cause the failure of the 3Gbps ports.
To correct this problem, Intel has disabled this transistor all together, but this required the fabrication of a new revision of the Cougar Point chipset, identified with the B3 stepping that has only now started to ship.