DSRs do state that consumers can reject the goods as faulty at any point up to 6 months after purchase, return them and expect a full refund including their postage costs.
Not 100% accurate. This is part of the Sale of Goods act not Distance Selling.
A buyer can outright reject an item as faulty within a reasonable time after purchase (typically about a month - although in this situation, you could argue about waiting until it was clear what the official recall situation was before deciding whether to accept or reject the item).
After that, the seller is obliged to replace or repair a faulty item for up to six years after purchase, not just six months. Six months is where the onus of proof that the item is faulty (as opposed to misused or normal wear and tear) changes. Up to six months, the seller has to show that the item was not faulty (which is normally difficult except in cases where it has clearly been misused), whereas after six months the buyer has to show that the item was faulty (which is normally difficult). However, this is one of the exceptional cases since we have a clear admittance of the fault from Intel!
So there is no need to panic - even if you can't get it replaced under the recall or the warranty (which may be the preferable routes in terms of turnaround time), you'll still have a statutory right to expect OcUK to replace/repair well beyond any recall or warranty.
As regards OCUK continuing to sell boards despite the manufacturers apparently advising their resellers not to, well the only one likely to suffer is OCUK. The fault, from all descriptions will not damage any hardware, and the risk of data loss is no higher than other causes which might cause your computer to crash (power supply glitches, blue screen, hard reset etc...).
I suspect Intel and the manufacturers are only advising resellers not to continue selling the boards in order to reduce the number which need to be replaced come April (and hence the cost of the recall). The worst that can happen is that the manufacturers only honour the recall and warranty replacements for boards purchased before a certain date. However, as a buyer, you'll still have your statutory right for OCUK to replace/repair the board regardless. So the risk is that if OCUK continues to sell the affected boards, it may end up picking up the tab for replacing some of the boards (possibly many years later, if people decide to wait until a port actually fails before seeking a replacement) rather than Intel and the manufacturers. And that is really a business decision for OCUK.
Matthew