You may have noticed that this morning that we removed the offering for the QX6800 Extreme Edition processor at Bin+3 from the XPS 720 H2C.
We apologize for having to do this, truth is that we do not have a line of sight to enough supply of QX6800 processors that can tolerate the Bin+3 overclocking. Since it already runs at a 2.93GHz speed, there’s a limited headroom to overclock. It just comes down to physics—a design can only tolerate so much voltage. Note that we are still offering the QX6800 Extreme Edition on the air-cooled XPS 720 Red system running at a lower clock speed of Bin+1 or (3.2GHz).
Now for more background: even with the H2C cooling system, we found that only a small fraction of our QX6800 processors could go to Bin+3 and remain stable through our rigorous testing process. When we started taking orders for the 720 H2C we had a fixed supply of the QX6800 chips that seemed ample at the time, but once when we found out how rare the Bin+3 variety was, we started combing our supply chain for even more. Last week, our backlog forecast started to pass our best estimates for finding Bin+3 chips. It just did not make sense to take any additional orders when we couldn’t tell when we would be able to fulfill them.
At this point, our engineering team is doing everything they can to get more Bin+3s out of our original supply but this is expected to be a slow process. Fortunately, a lot of the processors that don’t make the Bin+3 screening support Bin+2 just fine (3.46GHz) so we are going to make this an offering very soon. In other words, soon we will re-introduce the quad-core QX6800 processor on the XPS 720 H2C at Bin +2, or 3.46GHz.
Our next step is to get our customers an H2C system that they’ve been waiting so patiently for. Since our QX6800 Bin+3 supply is exhausted, and it’s not feasible for us to fulfill all orders, we’re assembling a callback team who will contact customers with affected orders to give you two options:
1) Cancel your current QX6800 Bin+3 order and re-order your system with the second most powerful processor, the QX6700 Extreme Edition quad-core, which also supports overclocking to Bin+3 (3.46GHz). These orders should ship within two weeks and we will upgrade your shipping to Next Day.
2) Cancel your current QX6800 Bin+3 order and re-order with the Bin+2 version of the QX6800 processor. These orders should ship within two weeks also and will also get upgraded shipping to Next Day.
We know it’s not a perfect solution, and do apologize for the inconvenience. At this point, we’ll remain focused on getting systems shipped out to customers who this affects.