UK first to launch Sandy Bridge with Scan and Overclockers

While the press NDA lifted a few days back, KitGuru had been under the impression that the actual embargo for selling was closer to Sunday 9th January. If that's true, then it seems that the UK is leading the world again in technology. Sort of.

In the UK, there are a small handful of companies that sell enough Intel product to qualify for the top end of the special partner programmes. Overclockers and Scan are certainly two of them.

Alongside eBuyer and Dabs, these two resellers are responsible for a significant amount of the enthusiast kit sold in the UK each year. While the global turnovers of Scan and Overclockers might be completely overshadowed by their American cousins like NewEgg, Tiger and Best Buy, here in the UK they are definitely significant.

Unfortunately, it is now late on a Friday night and no one is likely to be able to answer questions about the exact deadline Intel has set for selling its 2nd generation Core processors. No luck so far.

While Scan and Overclockers appear to be busy breaking Intel's embargo on Sandy Bridge, another UK company has stepped up to break the embargo on behalf of the smaller system builders. Aria's rather cutely named Sandy Blitz is already up for sale at just £1,399.99 with a pair of GTX 580 cards from Intel favourite, nVidia.

KitGuru says: Overall, we had a lot of fun watching embargos and NDAs getting busted by retailers (foreign and domestic) during 2010. With this avalanche of breaks against the new Core processors' protected status, it looks like 2011 will also be a good year's hunting for hacks!

Comments below – especially if you find any other companies ignoring Intel's position with blatant disregard.

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