The sandy bridge motherboards replacement begins

chrisarm · 3 Mar 2011 at 16:41

It's anoying that they are shipping boards to retailers in march but they are not swapping boards till may. Sent my board back to ocuk because of a fault a week ago, ocuk has sent the board back to asus for some reason and I've been told I will be notified when they receive it back. Bit weird, will not be happy if after all this time they send me a board that is not a b3.

Hagar · 3 Mar 2011 at 16:43

Frank_Rizzo said:
What is the non recoverable costs?

Admin, staff costs, overtime, additional overheads etc.

VaderDSL · 3 Mar 2011 at 16:44

Wouldn't price differences be based upon costs external to the actual issue, like exchange rates etc?

Frank_Rizzo · 3 Mar 2011 at 16:46

No you guys are missing the point.

The price lists show two boards

B2 and B3

Why is it that B3 is £10-£20 more expensive that B2?

If there are admin costs then surely it is the B2 that should be more expensive because THIS board will be swapped out at some stage.

chippy08 · 3 Mar 2011 at 16:46

Frank_Rizzo said:
Why should they in this instance?

OK, it could be the case that Intel have forced a price increase, which is passed on to manufacturers, which is passed onto the retailers and thus us.

That would be known in a few weeks.

But if it is the case that the end seller is profiting at OUR expense then that is just not on.

I can remember a post from oc head quarters saying the replacement boards will be at an higher price, so they already new they would be charging more for them.

chippy08 · 3 Mar 2011 at 16:48

VaderDSL said:
Wouldn't price differences be based upon costs external to the actual issue, like exchange rates etc?

More like greed and profit.

Stormar · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:03

well there are other suppliers out there beside ocuk who have not increased the price,its everyones choice at the end of the day,there will always be ppl who will pay whatever just so they have a product first,its really down to you to decide if you want to pay it not ocuk's.

chippy08 · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:11

Would be silly to jump in striaght away with asus boards as you dont know if the issues from before have been fixed.

Johnnytoxic · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:20

It's great living 2 minutes away from Overclockers. Just got the Asus Pro B3

I feel bad for the B2 people.

nightmare99 · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:30

Wouldn't price differences be based upon costs external to the actual issue, like exchange rates etc?

Yes this and the fact that there is limited stock available so this pushes the prices up.

chippy08 · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:30

Johnnytoxic said:
It's great living 2 minutes away from Overclockers. Just got the Asus Pro B3

I feel bad for the B2 people.

let us know if it still has the old problems once its running

Johnnytoxic · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:39

chippy08 said:
let us know if it still has the old problems once its running

How would I test? Do I run that program?

nightmare99 · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:43

let us know if it still has the old problems once its running

Which old problems? The sleep issues some are having?

Or do you mean Errta 1-13 as these are all still present in B3

chippy08 · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:48

Johnnytoxic said:
How would I test? Do I run that program?

All the old BSOD problems and all the other problems that people exsperienced hopefully you wont but you never know.

nightmare99 · 3 Mar 2011 at 17:54

All the old BSOD problems and all the other problems that people exsperienced hopefully you wont but you never know.

I would not think so, I guess it depends on which BIOS version the board ships with and which version he was using before on the old board.

chippy08 · 3 Mar 2011 at 18:01

Hope so the asus was my first choice.

nightmare99 · 3 Mar 2011 at 18:03

I'm sure you will be fine, I think most people went for the ASUS so the technical discussion/problems are a bit lop sided in ASUS direction. You will find plenty of people have them working just fine.

Montala · 3 Mar 2011 at 18:29

What some customers are going to find is that if they want to purchase a new B3 motherboard now, from a certain retailer (NOT OcUK!) they will be charged a massive 25% more than they would have paid three weeks ago for the same model.

nightmare99 · 3 Mar 2011 at 18:34

Its not the same model as it is being treated as a different sku, this new sku is in demand and has limited stock availability, as such it may be more expensive. Thats before we get into currency fluctuations etc.

You might as well start wheeling out all of the other early adopter arguments as well. Give it a month to let things clam down and I'm sure the pricing will be closer to what is was for the older more available versions.

Montala · 3 Mar 2011 at 18:38

nightmare99 said:
I would not think so, I guess it depends on which BIOS version the board ships with and which version he was using before on the old board.

Asus are now saying that "Pre-B3 revision motherboard users can also download and use the new B3 revision BIOS, drivers and utilities. Go to the ASUS support site at http://support.asus.com to download the latest BIOS version."

This implies to me that a new BIOS revision either is, or shortly will be available.

Edit: The above statement was taken from:http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/Identify_B3_Motherboards/ which also gives some useful information on how to identify the new B3 boards. Mind you, I think it does come from their 'global' website, as page linked to from the link right at the bottom of the page isn't even in English!