Thailand Floods Spur Rush to SSDs

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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It was predicted as soon as the reports of the massive floods in Thailand came across the news wires that there would be a surge of new orders for SSD replacements. With the closing of a dozen or more HDD manufacturing plants, the demand is now turning to the more expensive SSD alternative to replace the unavailable hard drive inventory.

Hard drive prices should stabilize by June, IDC said, and the industry should be back to normal by the second half of 2012.
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Damn, that sucks. I am going to have to wait another 6-7 months before I can pick up some decently priced 2 tb drives. I have 5 2 tb samsungs, but I want some more for other applications. I still dont think that I will move to an SSD until the price per gb comes down to a reasonable point. I still think the 10k rmp raptor 600 is a better deal, well at least it was until the price shot up. If I could find a high quality SSD that was at least 400gb and not 300+$ I might pick it up.
 
This is a good thing. It will boost demand for SSDs and therefore boost industry adoption and development and mass production which will improve technology and lower costs.
 
Team Obi Juan said:
Oh, so a bunch of people buying SSDs lowers their price.
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High demand for SSD means lower supply in the short term but the demand will in turn encourage manufacturers to boost production and R&D and in the long term, supply will be much higher than in the past, therefore prices will drop and the tech will get better.

Imagine if around 1999, all the CRT monitor factories were flooded or something and it spurned LCD manufacturer much earlier than when it caught on big (2003ish)
 
I have seen many more SSD purchases in my customers builds recently. They aren't a difficult sell at all. Many customers don't need a lot of space.
 
Yep! Just bought 2 ssds. A corsair force 3 for my laptop and an intel 320. One of many reasons was because the HD's price jumped after the flood..
 
Simmonz said:
I have seen many more SSD purchases in my customers builds recently. They aren't a difficult sell at all. Many customers don't need a lot of space.
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Many people bought large HDDs because they were cheap. Why get a 320gb HDD when you could get 1tb for a little bit more?

But now its different. SSDs still carry a hefty price premium, but a good 120gb ssd is now cheaper than a 1tb HDD. Sure 1Tb is orders of magnitude bigger, but for many people its just wasted space.
 
I was going to give my nephew a gaming pc for xmas, but not anymore, I can't afford a big ass hard drive, i hadn't realized how much the prices went up. Can't fit many games on a smallish SSD unfortunately.
 
sucks for the people in thailand, good news anyone interested in more efficient, more performant hardware
 
I have seen many more SSD purchases in my customers builds recently. They aren't a difficult sell at all. Many customers don't need a lot of space.
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Definitely. All workstations I've built since early last year have included an SSD. I almost consider it a crime to build a PC these days without one. 60gb is all that's needed for the vast majority of workstations with Win7, and for large storage requirements I set up a NAS.
 
Spare-Flair said:
This is a good thing. It will boost demand for SSDs and therefore boost industry adoption and development and mass production which will improve technology and lower costs.
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Agreed but is annoying in the short term.
 
stealthy123 said:
I was going to give my nephew a gaming pc for xmas, but not anymore, I can't afford a big ass hard drive, i hadn't realized how much the prices went up. Can't fit many games on a smallish SSD unfortunately.
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If the price of a hard drive was enough to break your gaming PC budget, then you were building a really shit system to begin with.

Average cost increase of a 1TB drive? About $70.

$70 is enough to prevent you from being able to build a system? Bullshit.
 
techrat said:
If the price of a hard drive was enough to break your gaming PC budget, then you were building a really shit system to begin with.

Average cost increase of a 1TB drive? About $70.

$70 is enough to prevent you from being able to build a system? Bullshit.
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That was my thought exactly. Although I would have been nicer about it..
 
Simmonz said:
I have seen many more SSD purchases in my customers builds recently. They aren't a difficult sell at all. Many customers don't need a lot of space.
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thats not how most consumers see it though. when they compare laptops for instance with price being equal, they will always pick the 2.8Ghz Intel Celeron based model with a "500 gig ram and 2 terabytes of memory" over the 2.5Ghz Intel Core i3 system with a 320gb hard drive and 4Gb of ram.

most consumers are very much still number driven and rarely know the difference between a gigabyte and terabyte or between a hard drive and a SSD or a celeron and a core i series processor
 
Scumbag [H]ardOcer:


Floods in Thailand, worries about hard drive prices.
 
techrat said:
If the price of a hard drive was enough to break your gaming PC budget, then you were building a really shit system to begin with.

Average cost increase of a 1TB drive? About $70.

$70 is enough to prevent you from being able to build a system? Bullshit.
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when i am building it from parts I have laying around and i already blew 60 bucks on a power supply because the one I was going to use crapped the bed, yes, yes the price of a hard drive did screw the build, thanks so much for rubbing it in my face that I am too poor to make up the difference this year, you're a great guy.
 
techrat said:
If the price of a hard drive was enough to break your gaming PC budget, then you were building a really shit system to begin with.

Average cost increase of a 1TB drive? About $70.

$70 is enough to prevent you from being able to build a system? Bullshit.
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Talk about a total jerk. Sheesh.
 
nobody_here said:
thats not how most consumers see it though. when they compare laptops for instance with price being equal, they will always pick the 2.8Ghz Intel Celeron based model with a "500 gig ram and 2 terabytes of memory" over the 2.5Ghz Intel Core i3 system with a 320gb hard drive and 4Gb of ram.

most consumers are very much still number driven and rarely know the difference between a gigabyte and terabyte or between a hard drive and a SSD or a celeron and a core i series processor
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this is so true. my parents were talking about buying a new laptop the other day and my dad said something along the lines of "when it comes to storage and memory i always get the largest options available" the processor speed was an afterthought. i suppose its good that they at least come to me for advice before they make technology purchases.
 
herfalerf said:
this is so true. my parents were talking about buying a new laptop the other day and my dad said something along the lines of "when it comes to storage and memory i always get the largest options available" the processor speed was an afterthought. i suppose its good that they at least come to me for advice before they make technology purchases.
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The best part is most people like this use almost nothing. And they could have made it with a 128 GB SSD.
 
I do not care for the OPs wording either. There is no shortage of HDDs that must be filled with SSDs. It is just the jump in HDD prices makes helps some people make the decision to go to SSDs faster.
 
rudy said:
I do not care for the OPs wording either. There is no shortage of HDDs that must be filled with SSDs. It is just the jump in HDD prices makes helps some people make the decision to go to SSDs faster.
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There is a shortage of HDDs and people are filling that void with SSDs.
 
stealthy123 said:
when i am building it from parts I have laying around and i already blew 60 bucks on a power supply because the one I was going to use crapped the bed, yes, yes the price of a hard drive did screw the build, thanks so much for rubbing it in my face that I am too poor to make up the difference this year, you're a great guy.
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I think that person was assuming you were talking about buying all the parts, and I think more then one of us made that assumption as well based on your reply. Had you said

"I was going to give my nephew a gaming pc for xmas from leftover parts, but not anymore, I can't afford a big ass hard drive"

I think it would have put it more into perspective as I'm sure alot of us around here do the exact same thing. I have completely upgraded friends and families computers way beyond what they had and it only cost $100-$200 out of pocket because of spare parts lieing around.
 
I personally think having an SSD is thee-best gaming purchase I've made since my 2nd 5870 was added to my system. Load times are so much better in every game I play.
 
Starcrossed said:
There is a shortage of HDDs and people are filling that void with SSDs.
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I don't see how it would be possible to fill the void with SSD's. It's still orders of magnitude cheaper to buy a 3TB mechanical drive than to try to get that amount of storage in SSD's. The OCZ Colossus 2 960GB is $2,419. Last time I checked, a 3TB mechanical drive was not anywhere near $8,000. Typically, you don't buy SSD's to increase your storage space, but to increase the performance of your system.
 
techrat said:
If the price of a hard drive was enough to break your gaming PC budget, then you were building a really shit system to begin with.

Average cost increase of a 1TB drive? About $70.

$70 is enough to prevent you from being able to build a system? Bullshit.
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Seriously dude.. Anger management PLEASE.


Good news about SSD's though.
 
Starcrossed said:
There is a shortage of HDDs and people are filling that void with SSDs.
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There is no shortage of HDDs there is no size of hard drive I am aware of that I cannot get. I can walk into any store and grab them off the shelf. There is still a huge diference in size. It is like when something goes wrong with oil and people say there is an oil shortage funny in my lifetime I have never seen a situation where I could not buy gas. It is just a speculators reaction to drive up prices. But in fact we are in no danger at all of exhausting our supply of hard drives or gas.

But whatever glass half full glass half empty all in how you want to sensationalize stuff.
 
rudy said:
There is no shortage of HDDs there is no size of hard drive I am aware of that I cannot get. I can walk into any store and grab them off the shelf. There is still a huge diference in size. It is like when something goes wrong with oil and people say there is an oil shortage funny in my lifetime I have never seen a situation where I could not buy gas. It is just a speculators reaction to drive up prices. But in fact we are in no danger at all of exhausting our supply of hard drives or gas.

But whatever glass half full glass half empty all in how you want to sensationalize stuff.
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100% correct.

This will end in class action law suits for extorting prices.
 
JimmiG said:
I don't see how it would be possible to fill the void with SSD's. It's still orders of magnitude cheaper to buy a 3TB mechanical drive than to try to get that amount of storage in SSD's. The OCZ Colossus 2 960GB is $2,419. Last time I checked, a 3TB mechanical drive was not anywhere near $8,000. Typically, you don't buy SSD's to increase your storage space, but to increase the performance of your system.
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yes, but instead of buying a 500gb black edition drive for a boot drive. People will now consider a 120gb ssd instead.
 
Green is designed for silence and less power usage. Operates at 5400rpm and with APM set to low. Blue is a midway point, balancing power, noise and performance. Black is optimized for performance.
 
Meh, a lot of users who barely multi task wouldn't reap much benefit out of a SSD, I'm talking about the type that does 90% of things in the browser and the other 10% in Word. Personally I love my SSD, all three were great purchases and I notice a vast difference even on my netbook... But I'm not sure it'd have as much of an impact on lighter usage scenarios.

Still, I'm glad mass market adoption will slowly start to ramp up, it's overdue. The cost isn't where it needs to be yet but hopefully this will help drive it down faster. I still wouldn't expect any SSD deals on decent drives under $1/GB for the time being tho, not until the second half of 2012 when HDD supply ramps back up and OEM demand for SSDs sags again (specially if Intel's CES ultrabook push doesn't hit it out of the park).
 
Impulse said:
Meh, a lot of users who barely multi task wouldn't reap much benefit out of a SSD, I'm talking about the type that does 90% of things in the browser and the other 10% in Word.
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It's hard to say. I think it depends on the person. I've gotten very positive responses over the last 2 years whenever I upgrade workstations to SSDs. The usage is never heavy, but the overall snappiness of the system and eliminating the HDD bottleneck during those rush situations that makes them love it :)
 
i seldom turn off my computer and with superfetch under windows 7 i dont really notice any slowness in my work system, i only recently put an intel 80G SSD into my work rig, and honestly, i dont see a "OMG!!! i have an SSD" performance gains.

Sure, reboots are fast when i do them, but by far not worth the price.
 
When I built my file server with 6x2TB drives, I bought three spares because they were on sale for $55 or $60 after rebate and I wanted identical drives in case one drive in the RAID array took a dump. Happy I picked those up when I did, as the drives are close to $200 now.
 
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