Manno (Switzerland), 3rd February 2011 – Following the announcement by Intel of a design flaw in the Sandy Bridge mainboard chipset, Acer confirms that the company is fully aware of the issue and is taking all necessary steps to minimize any inconvenience customers might experience.
Acer has already stopped shipping the affected products and issued a recall of the machines that might be concerned from all distribution and retail channels. At the same time, Acer is working in close collaboration with Intel to coordinate the next steps.
On January 31st, Intel issued a recall on all P67 and H67 motherboards that are built on found in the Sandy Bridge micro architecture. The issue is hardware related and required a silicon fix. The outcome of this flaw is that, in some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipset may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD drives. The issue affects SATA 3 Gb/s ports, while not affecting the SATA 6 Gb/s ports.
The issue is related to connectivity, meaning that in a worst-case scenario the machine may not identify the hard disk or DVD, but it will not cause any damage to the data stored on the drives and is not potentially harmful in any other way. Since the effect of the flaw will materialize over a rather long period of time, users of affected PCs will not necessarily see an immediate effect and they can keep using their PC without any particular attention or concern about performance.
Acer is proud to offer products that are free from defects of materials or workmanship, under normal condition of use and wishes to minimize any impact of this issue on its customers. In order to do so, Acer is in the process of setting up a web site where customers will be able to find out whether their product could be affected by the problem.
In case a machine is impacted, Acer will offer the option to service the defective unit, thus minimizing any inconvenience associated with the need to backup and restore user data, as well as to re-install all applications. While the timing of the service depends on the supply of the fixed chipset from Intel, Acer is committed to complete the whole activity in the shortest possible time.
Alternatively, customers may request to swap their affected PC with another Acer product of comparable performance.
Both options will be free of charge.
