Australian distributors, vendors and resellers have removed Sandy Bridge motherboards for sale, throwing marketing campaigns and supply chains into disarray following Intel’s revelation of a flaw in the operation of high-performance systems.
“We were just about to launch a catalogue today with resellers in regional areas so we are pulling the pin on that,” said Maree Lowe, marketing director of ASI Solutions.
“We’ve got ads placed on the new platform and agreements in place with buying groups who have print catalogues based on the new platform,” added ASI product manager Craig Quinn.
The vendor announced yesterday that it had discovered a fault in the Intel 6 Series support chip, codenamed Cougar Point, which could cause Serial-ATA ports to “degrade over time”. The issue was believed to affect a portion of Second Generation core i5 or i7 quad core motherboards, the chipset of which was released last year in September. Stock has been available in Australia since January.
“We have already asked our distributors to stop selling the board,” said one vendor, who refused to speak on the record until his company had made an official announcement. “We are working with Intel for solutions and we will take the board back.”
Scale disputed
Intel said less than 8 million compromised motherboards had been shipped globally but refused to break down shipments by country. However, the Australian market buys more high-performance motherboards and graphics cards than other, more populous Asia Pacific countries and could have a high percentage of stock, said a vendor.
The anonymous vendor said it had sold “a few thousand” Sandy Bridge boards already and said the effect on the supply chain would be deeply felt.
“I can tell you the number [of stock already sold] is humungous. And a lot of stock is still on the way, still in transit,” said the vendor. “It’s sky-high numbers.”
Distributor Synnex contradicted this report, claiming that sales were very small given that Intel had released the product last month.
“I dare say there won’t be too many in the market. It’s just newly launched, Intel just launched this product 9 January,” Synnex’s Kevin Tam said. “I don’t believe that the impact is too huge. The impact won’t be on the distributor and end user at the moment, it will be on manufacturing.”
ASI Solutions had also sold “less than 100” systems with the flawed boards. January had been a quiet month and the news would not have a great impact on stock already sold, ASI’s Quinn said.
“We have been discussing with customers the new platform and have shipped a small number and we will look at those on a case by case basis.”
The white-box manufacturer would continue building systems “a bit longer than anticipated” with the previous chipset. “The boards we were running down we will keep going through to Q2 at least. We always have a strong overlap of those systems anyway,” Quinn said.
Recall details
“Intel hasn’t told us anything,” Synnex’s Tam said. “All I have is an email communication saying, ‘We are now formalising the contingency plan and we’ll be in touch soon’.”
"We have to find out exactly what product has been affected. Apparently it’s not all faulty," said Gigabyte's Billy Lin. "We are actually talking to Intel at the moment."
The anonymous vendor suggested that users hold onto defective motherboards until Intel had manufactured redesigned versions.
“For the end user, if they return the board now they won’t have a board to use [until a replacement is issued]. The suggestion I have is to use [the flawed part] until April when Intel has a replacement board and then bring it back to the shop and replace it,” the vendor said.
Intel has also not released any further information regarding the nature of the flaw except to say that it only became apparent after several years of operation.
“The motherboard still works, it’s just over time you will slow the performance of a SATA 3.0 hard drive. This [drive] is not something that is currently popular,” said the vendor. “It’s not something that is going to burn the house down.”
“I don’t have a full understanding of the fault mechanism,” ASI’s Quinn said, who added that he was frantically reading websites for more information. “It’s expected to have more impact on performance on high-performance systems with high [input-output requirements], so maybe multiple hard drives or multiple SATA devices attached to the chipset.”
“Down the track there may be a disconnect between the drive and the motherboard, it will obviously stop the PC working but it’s not a loss of data. It’s up to the individual whether they will replace the motherboard now or later.”
Impact on supply chain
Sandy Bridge was a major release for Intel, which had already heavily publicised the motherboard in preparation for first quarter 2011 sales.
ASI’s Quinn said tier-one vendors would already have ordered many systems built around the flawed motherboard.
“I haven’t seen a tier-one product issued yet but I bet their pipeline is full. Certainly at the channel level there’s stocks of motherboards. We have motherboards coming in from China and orders from Intel, so that all grinds to a halt,” Quinn said.
A complicating factor was the timing; Chinese factory workers go on holiday today for a week for Chinese New year, which would delay resupply of replacement boards.
“I think the disruption will last quite some months. Either you’re a tier one with a fairly long factory lead time or a channel partner on the end of reworked motherboards, and all that is going to take a number of weeks,” Quinn.
“I suspect it would be mid-March before we really see the relaunch of the platform.”
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