Digital Storm's Response to P67 (Sandy Bridge)

Digital Storm has just recently been informed by Intel of an issue with the Cougar Point chipset used in all P67 and H67 motherboards. We would like to take a moment to explain in detail to any customers who recently purchased a P67 chipset motherboard what this issue is and how it will affect their computers performance now and in the future.

The issue concerns only the SATA 3G ports, not the SATA 6G ports on P67 and H67 motherboards. What may occur over time is a degradation in SATA 3G performance, however, SATA 6G performance is completely unaffected by this issue. Also, there is no issue with the Sandy Bridge processor, this issue resides in the motherboard chipset and again specifically concerns the performance of the SATA 3G ports only.

Before the release of Sandy Bridge, Digital Storm has already been installing customer hard drives to the faster SATA 6G ports; this means that this issue should not affect the large majority of our customers who purchased a Sandy Bridge based system. The main devices that may be affected by this issue are optical drives. The performance degradation issue is tied to the amount of use the SATA 3G ports receive, and since a large portion of users don’t use their optical drives on a regular basis; this further reduces the likelihood of performance degradation.

We value our customers business and want to provide the absolute best product and customer support. Taking that into consideration, we are offering customers that have recently purchased a Sandy Bridge system the following options should they wish to have their motherboard replaced:

1.     OPTION 1: You may have your computer sent back to our facility and upgraded with a revised P67 or H67 motherboard once it is released in March. If you would like to do this, please email: [email protected].

2.     OPTION 2: If you would rather not ship your system back to Digital Storm, we will ship you a replacement motherboard as an advanced warranty replacement when they are released in March. If you would like to do this, please email: [email protected].

Edited by Alex - 01 Feb 2011 at 8:04pm

Agreed - you all are serious about the service! I just hope Intel is paying for all your shipping and labor.   According to the article I read they are spending over $800 million on the resolution - so I hope DS gets their cut. This is very similar to when I was young and the Pentium was found to have a floating point error - I still have the flawed CPU in my drawer if anyone is interested... :)

Can optical drives be hooked up to the 6.0 ports to avoid the issue? I have very limited SATA knowledge, so forgive my lack of knowledge.

Optical drives can be hooked to SATA 6G ports. If a customer orders a single hard drive, and a single optical drive, we'll place both of them on the SATA 6G ports.

Edited by Alex - 01 Feb 2011 at 12:22am

Just a question. The 3G port that is bad on these boards is where the CD for games go, right?

Edited by Joel - 01 Feb 2011 at 12:54am

One of many reasons why we love DS.

If it was me I would put the dvd drives on the sata 2.0, till the new mobo comes out and either I have DS send me the board and replace it or ship it to DS and have them replace it.

Alex is the cost of shipping covered here?

lol I missed that part, thanks Qwann

IMHO:

Here is what everybody needs to remember, the sata 2.0 ports are effected over 2 years of use, that means you can use your 2 intel sata 3.0 ports for your HDDs, and I would use the sata 2.0 port for the dvd drive/s, new mobos are out in march, so you will never notice any degradation by then, and in march one way or another you swap mobo and that is it, IMO you can even connect your drives to the sata 2.0 and not notice any problems at all by march. With the DS customers service (ie paying for mobo swap), its business as usual IMO, no big deal here for DS users, get whatever you want, use it till march, then upgrade mobo in march.

Edited by DST4ME - 01 Feb 2011 at 1:50am

Very nice Alex, DS should be very proud, I know we are

you have the option of waiting till march or getting now and then shipping it back in march or getting a new mobo you install yourself in march.

Yes you can request upgrades while they have it.

Edited by DST4ME - 01 Feb 2011 at 4:57am

It sucks and very disappointing, but thing do happen from time to time.

Yeah, everything points to SATA 3 working correctly.  And its also a plus that a lot of ASUS boards have FOUR SATA 3 ports, which farther mitigates the issue.

So if im reading this correctly lets say i ordered a asus p8p67 motherboard. I would want 1 HD obviously hooked to a 6g port another 6g port wired just in case i want to add another HD later and since the asus board has 4 sata 6 ports i could get the optical drive plugged into the sata 6 port and be fine?

Meh, so it seem I miss-understood the original forum posting...if you are pending or havent shipped out yet they dont give you the option to send it back later free of charge to get a fixed motherboard, you can either switch to x58, have them hold the order till end of march mid april, or go thru with the order as configured...the free of charge only applies to the exact dates he posted and if you allready have the product...this is a big dissapointment to me, as I was plaining on adding more h-drives over the length of the system and even my high end board doesnt have that many sata 3 connectors...but according to my email, if I dont wait 2 or so months for the new boards, I wont have that option available...im not waiting 2 months while my bank account is drained...srry

Edited by Divine - 01 Feb 2011 at 2:34pm

Hey alex, I dont blaim you guys at all...its intels fault, and even then with all tech comes problems.....I will just pay to ship it back I guess, and get a new board when they come out...but you can understand why I dont want to wait, paid all the $ for something, would like to use it soon not 2 or so months down the road.

@ Alex,

I got my order going and in stage 3 currently. I was asked on the phone by DS to go with one hard drive to avoid issues, so I just dropped my solid state drive in my configuration. I kind of wanted a solid state drive, but I don't want any problems either and was told they were calling people placing the sandy bridge orders and asking that. Which is fine for me, but I was wondering if something could be worked out in a couple of months when the new sandy bridge motherboards come out. I basically was thinking I could send back my system provided there has not been any modification to the options you posted (free shipping and free replacement Mobo) and at the same time purchase a SSD then have it put into the new motherboard while it is at your facility? I guess it is just something I am thinking about but I am not sure.

All that being said... I may just wait until my next system to purchase a solid state perhaps if everything is up and running smoothly. However, if any issues do occur down the road, It would be nice to get the new version of the motherboard.

@MosleyP4P, we can always install the regular SATA hard drive and SSD on the two SATA 6G ports. Having an optical drive on the 3G port honestly has a very rare chance the port will have performance degradation due to the lack of constant daily use a hard drive normal uses reading and writing. We'll be more than happy to change out the board for you, but, you will be responsible for shipping costs later, as we are offering you the option now, prior to shipment of your system on whether you would like to continue, wait, or change to a different chip-set such as the X58.

@Davis8282, as of right now, the laptops are not in-stock, and they are on pre-order. If you do order one, you will receive a laptop with no issues, however, the ETA may be pushed to March.

No problem. Mid-March to end of March is what we're seeing.