Taiwanese manufacturer Asus announced it will begin shipping replacement B3-stepping motherboards and notebooks not suffering from the SATA degradation issues of Intel's 6-Series "Cougar Point" chipset this week. The news come shortly after it was confirmed that Intel had begun seeding the fixed chip into the channel, and mirrors MSI in providing a fast response to prevent any further inconvenience and interruption to customers.

Those who already own potentially affected Asus motherboards may visit this website for product return and replacement details. Much like MSI and likely other manufacturers as well, the company will be placing stickers on products and their packaging in order for users to be certain they are getting a revised B3 stepping part. The chipset version can also be verified through the BIOS, Asus SATA Verifier utility or CPUID's CPU-Z.


The company has previously said that any customer who owns an Asus product affected by the Intel design flaw will be able to have it replaced free of charge between March 1 and June 30, 2011. We expect motherboards and systems using the new B3 silicon to be on sale at retailers and online in greater quantities around April.