OEMs and motherboard manufacturers to offer refunds/replacements over Sandy Bridge chipset flaw

It seems that all the major PC OEMs and motherboard manufacturers have stepped up and owners of systems with the flawed Sandy Bridge chipsets a refund or replacement when new parts become available.

OEMs HP and Dell have all come out with statements saying that customers with affected systems will be entitled to an immediate refund, exchange, or a new motherboard once Intel releases the updated B3 stepping of the 6-series chipsets. Samsung is offering refunds or exchange.

Motherboard manufacturers are also playing fair. ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are all offering refunds or replacements once updated boards become available.

MSI has also offered Sandy Bridge customers advice on how they can continue to use their Sandy Bridge motherboards safely in the meantime:

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 with no detrimental effect, for more detailed instructions please click here.

This advice should work equally well for Sandy Bridge motherboards from other vendors.