Interesting thread/s. I do not own Sandy Bridge so speak from a neutral standpoint on the matter. I think what I am about to type may offend you Gibbo but there is no easy way of saying it and I would tell this to your face if I met you in real life. So no hard feelings just this is my opinion on it.
The decision from OCUK to keep selling the boards is unfortunately a typical and predictable one, and has a stench of "maximum turnover until we are MADE to stop selling". Other competitors care more for their customers than money grabbing at every opportunity. This looks particularly bad based on others pulling them from sale and OCUK continuing to sell them. You can dress it up all you want with the "we are providing for customers that still want to buy SB" and the "I would because I use my system like XXX" but this is unprofessional.
There have been so many let downs in the past from OCUK with big promo offers where the web servers could not handle the load, promises that were broken, questionable customer service and RMA procedures (althought this has improved). You really had an opportunity here to respond in a professional and caring attitude to your customers by doing the right thing and removing from sale until further developments, but I'm left feeling that you are once again defending your main interest which is to keep selling at what ever cost, and are happy to play down the situation and even get caught up in unecessary forum posts discussing how much of an issue it is for us, the people who buy your stuff. You cannot dictate the uses of every person here. Most people spend a lot of cash on cutting edge tech, and a lot of people post here who do max out all sata ports on their motherboards - this is overclockers after all.
Whilst I would agree this issue has been sprinkled with a fair dose of "lets over react on the internetz!!1", playing it down and continuing to sell the boards which will inevitably cause more unhappiness with customers which could have been prevented, is wrong. You also cannot keep knocking down the potential for data integrity issues. There is plenty of potential for a variety of issues to arise from this and anyone who values their data has a right to be worried regardless of their backup and storage routines.
Sorry, but that's the feeling I have and I think many others will Gibbo, and remember, I do not even own SB.
Cheers
which they will inevtably happen to get rid of stock although you will prob have to agree that your buying a half faulty product.