Posted on Wednesday, February 02 2011 @ 16:41 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
MSI send over an e-mail with information on how it will handle Intel's 6 series chipset mess. The company has stopped all shipments of 6-series motherboards and laptops and offers consumers who bought these products two options: you can either get your money back or you can wait until April for a product swap.
MSI has been informed by Intel about the design issues in the Intel 6 series chipsets. According to Intel the performance of some of the Intel SATA ports on Intel 6 series products can degrade over a period of 3 years. MSI takes the quality of our products very serious, so at this moment we are investigating product batches that may be affected and, meanwhile, have stopped all shipments to our distributors and resellers. Additionally, we asked resellers to hold sales of the Intel 6 series based MSI products to customers until the issue can be resolved.
Excerpt quote from the Intel statement:
"As part of ongoing quality assurance, Intel Corporation has discovered a design issue in a recently released support chip, the Intel® 6 Series, code-named Cougar Point, and has implemented a silicon fix. In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives."
"For computer makers and other Intel customers that have bought potentially affected chipsets or systems, Intel will work with its OEM partners to accept the return of the affected chipsets, and plans to support modifications or replacements needed on motherboards or systems."
Update: Februari 2nd, 2011 with service info for customers in Europe.
Products in the market
As of the 31st of January MSI informed all our distributors, retails and reseller to stop directly the sales of Intel 6 series based products of MSI and to hold any products pending shipments to customers. No need to worry in the case that you purchased an Intel 6 series based product form MSI after the 31st of January because we will take care for you. Consumers can check the section How to get support.
We started the procedure to collect all the current stock in the market. Retailers and reseller can return their Intel 6 series MSI products they have in stock to their point of purchase (distributor) which can return the goods to the MSI distribution centers. If retailers, resellers or MSI distributors have any questions about the procedure they can contact their local MSI sales representative.
Affected models
At this moment there are only a limit models in the market based on the Intel 6 series chipset. You can identify them based on the model name in the list below.
MSI Mainboards (Intel© P67)
P67A-GD65
P67A-GD55
P67A-GD53
P67A-C45
P67A-C43
P67S-C43
MSI Mainboards (Intel© H67)
H67MA-ED55
H67MA-E45
H67MS-E43
H67MS-E33
MSI Notebooks (Intel© PM67)
GT680R
MSI Notebooks (Intel© HM67)
CR640
CX640
How to get support
We want you to have a MSI product which you can trust and rely on. This is why we have 2 choices for your purchased Intel 6 series based MSI products;
Product swap
If you are confident and willing to wait we can swap your current Intel 6 series based product in a brand new MSI product which is based on the new B3 stepping of the Intel 6 series which solves the current SATA2 port issues. If you have an MSI 6 series mainboard you can – for the short term - connect your storage devices to the safe white SATA3 ports on your mainboard, for more detailed instructions please click here.
This MSI product you get swapped will have similar or better specs. These new MSI products will become available in April and this way you will miss your product only for a very short period of time. You can identify the new products by a clear sticker on the color box. We will release details about this procedure before the end of February.
Product return
If you are not confident about your current MSI based 6 series product MSI offers you the possibility to return the product to your point of purchase which will credit you. Please make sure to back-up your personal data.
News and updates
MSI is committed to quality. You can always find the latest updates or a list with the European service centers on the address: msi.eu/intel-6-series-chipset-issue/.
