Reports are abound that Intel has halted shipments of its Cougar Point chipset for the Sandy Bridge platform and will be issuing recalls of the affected chips. Apparently, Intel has discovered a design flaw in the Series 6 chipset the affects the SATA II 3Gbps controller.
Intel says that temperature and voltage will cause the link to degrade over time. They are expecting a 5% failure rate over the next three years. Enthusiasts who utilize multiple SATA ports and push heavy workloads are most likely to be affected.
Intel expects motherboard manufactures to have the new silicon by February and be fully recovered by April. In the meantime, manufactueres will likely halt production of H67/P67 based motherboards.
For those who have already upgraded, failure rate is expected to be relatively low, and most boards have a three year warranty should the problem develop.
Source: Tom’s Hardware