Asus H67/P67

DreadAlert · 5 Mar 2011 at 21:05

Hi guys.

I've heard about an issue concerning the H67 and P67 motherboards.
I heard that its possible that if I get a P67 motherboard, then the 3GB/s ports may fail in the future.

However, If I got a Caviar Black 2TB, SATA 6GB/s, on this motherboard, would it matter even if it did stop functioning, as it will not be in use?

Thanks.
-DreadAlert-

Emphacy · 5 Mar 2011 at 21:09

The problem in the chipset was traced back to a transistor in the 3Gbps PLL clocking tree. The aforementioned transistor has a very thin gate oxide, which allows you to turn it on with a very low voltage. Unfortunately in this case Intel biased the transistor with too high of a voltage, resulting in higher than expected leakage current. Depending on the physical characteristics of the transistor the leakage current here can increase over time which can ultimately result in this failure on the 3Gbps ports. The fact that the 3Gbps and 6Gbps circuits have their own independent clocking trees is what ensures that this problem is limited to only ports 2 - 5 off the controller.

Therefore, no, you can still use a 6GB/s port and it would make no difference.

Surveyor · 5 Mar 2011 at 21:16

But if you hang on for a little while B3 stepping motherboards are becoming available which fix this problem.

DreadAlert · 5 Mar 2011 at 21:22

Emphacy said:
Therefore, no, you can still use a 6GB/s port and it would make no difference.

Great then. No need to wait for a different one cause I'll never be using the 3GB/s ports.

Surveyor · 6 Mar 2011 at 02:37

DreadAlert said:
Great then. No need to wait for a different one cause I'll never be using the 3GB/s ports.

Not good if you ever want to sell it in the future.