SSD Prices Could See a Steep Decline in 2018

Megalith

Megalith

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This is technically just a normalization of costs, but SSD prices, which are currently being inflated by NAND flash shortages, are expected to revert to standard levels next year. Depending on the availability of 3D NAND, however, we may see decreases even sooner than that, particularly for simpler drives such as TLC-based SSDs.

According to Trendfocus, SSD pricing has jumped by as much as 36 percent in some places. The market research firm expects that price increases will be the norm throughout the rest of 2017, but once 2018 rolls around, prices could go into a free fall and return to where they were before they started rising in the first place. There is also a chance that prices could ease before then. That will depend on whether chipmakers are able to ramp up 3D NAND flash memory production in time for the back-to-school season.
 
Yeah, SSD prices have gotten stupid. As much as what, two years ago, 250 GB 850 EVO drives were pretty commonly running ~$75. Not uncommon now to see them at what $90+?
 
Same old rule of computer components. Buy what you need right now, not for a year in the future.

250GB is good enough for OS, apps, a few games, and add a terrabyte spinner for mass storage. I've had 3 SSDs' die inside 3 year warranty so far, so I'm starting to get paranoid and looking at paying extra for 5 year warranty models.
 
"Short supply" mysteriously doesn't seem to be affecting the end availability to users of products using NAND. Whoda thunk it!
 
ir0nw0lf said:
Yeah, SSD prices have gotten stupid. As much as what, two years ago, 250 GB 850 EVO drives were pretty commonly running ~$75. Not uncommon now to see them at what $90+?
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I'll never see either of those prices in Canada.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
Yeah, SSD prices have gotten stupid. As much as what, two years ago, 250 GB 850 EVO drives were pretty commonly running ~$75. Not uncommon now to see them at what $90+?
Click to expand...

Prices on that drive haven't floated much lower than $99 at the local Micro Center during the past year, and they're known for running SSD and various other discounts all the time.
 
daglesj said:
Yeah these 'shortages' never actually exist. Always plenty of product available, just a way to lie about price hikes.
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I could understand inflated prices from heavy R&D costs from ssd's but shortages don't make any sense to me. Putting together a typical mechanic drive has got to be a hundred times more difficult and expensive to mass produce then a ssd.
 
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Tweak42 said:
Same old rule of computer components. Buy what you need right now, not for a year in the future.

250GB is good enough for OS, apps, a few games, and add a terrabyte spinner for mass storage. I've had 3 SSDs' die inside 3 year warranty so far, so I'm starting to get paranoid and looking at paying extra for 5 year warranty models.
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>>I've had 3 SSDs' die inside 3 year warranty so far


TLC drives by chance?

.
 
I don't know this drive is about 4 years old.
Capture.PNG
 
It is good I have 2 1TB SSD's in my home computer and 2 480GB SSD's in my other computer. Could not really afford the prices as they are now.
 
Tweak42 said:
Same old rule of computer components. Buy what you need right now, not for a year in the future.

250GB is good enough for OS, apps, a few games, and add a terrabyte spinner for mass storage. I've had 3 SSDs' die inside 3 year warranty so far, so I'm starting to get paranoid and looking at paying extra for 5 year warranty models.
Click to expand...

I've never had an SSD die. What were the symptoms? Did it just go poof or did you notice weird things?


cycy said:
I don't know this drive is about 4 years old.View attachment 21144
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I have that same drive. Never knew there was that utility for it.
 
Spidey329 said:
I've never had an SSD die. What were the symptoms? Did it just go poof or did you notice weird things?
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Similar symptoms to spinners in Windows Event Log. Freezing. Or you power on one day and they're just gone. Or if you have Linux they spew this kind of garbage through dmesg
Code: 
[  +0.000001] Write(10): 2a 00 00 19 5f a8 00 00 a8 00
[  +0.000097] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
[  +0.000002] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 
[  +0.000001] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
The early OCZ shens...
D3qeazU.jpg
 
SSDs in stock or storage made during when NANDs were cheap are all of the sudden as expensive as SSDs made when NANDs were expensive.
 
Spartacus said:
>>I've had 3 SSDs' die inside 3 year warranty so far

TLC drives by chance?
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2 MLC and 1 TLC. I bought the sandforce models at least a year after the problems were discovered, so I figured they should have the bugs fixed or they would not be selling them. Shame on me.

1 MLC really old OCZ Vertex 2, before OCZ started making bad drives. It out lived the company by a few years.
1 TLC PNY drive, Sandforce controller. Died in about a year. RMA sent me a upgraded "gaming" model.
1 MLC Patriot Pyro, Sandforce controller. Died inside 3 years, RMA replacement is in the mail as we speak

I should note these were all for family member systems. Now I'm going to stick to the the proven brand names, preferable with 5 year warranties, in attempt to avoid all the repair hassles.


Spidey329 said:
I've never had an SSD die. What were the symptoms? Did it just go poof or did you notice weird things?
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They all just poof and died no warnings. Backup your stuff!
 
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Nanogrip said:
SSDs in stock or storage made during when NANDs were cheap are all of the sudden as expensive as SSDs made when NANDs were expensive.
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It's the LIFO - Last In First Out - accounting method. Very common in retail. It's good for the vendor when they have a lot of inventory and wholesale prices rise, but bad for the vendor when they have a lot of inventory and prices drop. It does help the company stay competitive when prices drop. You don't want to be caught with a price drop on old inventory, and end up being significantly more expensive than the competition, and unable to clear out that inventory.

At least in the USA, once you set your accounting method, you cannot change it.
 
I've noticed the up-tick in SSD pricing recently. Was there a freak "fire" or "flood" at one or more of the NAND plants that forgot to be reported?


Higher prices suck, but in retrospect:
I paid $200 for a Samsung 830 128GB in Jan/Feb of 2012, and the 480-512GB models I was drooling over were $750+ back then.

Pricing of some popular models back in late Sep of 2011:

QuickMemo+_2017-04-05-07-38-13-1.png

(courtesy of AnandTech)

Today, I can grab a 2TB SSD for around $550 if I wanted to. 1TB drives are around $300, which isn't much more than the $280 I paid for my 1TB over a year ago that was on a clearance sale.

Could be worse, like when DDR3 tripled in price over the course of a couple days a few years ago.

Of course, now that I've said that...
 
I bought a bunch of Micron stock last year because this price increase was inevitable. Main factors are increasing bit demand and supply constriction due to fab change overs to the newer 3D and higher density stuff that shuts them down for an extended time. MU started earlier so its sales took a hit sooner. Now MU sales are ripping as other output contracts.
 
1TB SSDs are in the mid $200's. I've seen the Crucials drop below $200 during flash sales.
On the other side of the coin, I had to replace a dying 2TB WD Black spinner and it's still $125. Even the much cheaper Seagates are still around $75. I was hoping spinners would be borderline free these days :p
 
I remember everyone had a cow about the budget Kingston V300 SSDs and the change in slower Flash. However, I bought well over 50 of them. So far not one has failed. All of them have been rock solid. Had a few fancier SSDs fail though.

I'd still take a V300 over the cheaper TLC SSDs any day.
 
That'll be nice if the prices do go down. I think my 840 Pro will be hitting 5 years old next year, and after 28TB of writes its still going. Wouldn't mind more capacity though at times.
 
At work I've put out around 30 Samsung SSDs (to extend the life of older computers) and have 100+ Dell systems that shipped with SSDs. None have failed in the span of 3 to 4 years.
 
Crucial and Samsungs MLC's are the only ones I will touch. Forget TLC.
 
500gb is about 150$ that is what I upgraded to... I think its not bad.. lower price always better for sure of course!
 
jardows said:
It's the LIFO - Last In First Out - accounting method. Very common in retail. It's good for the vendor when they have a lot of inventory and wholesale prices rise, but bad for the vendor when they have a lot of inventory and prices drop. It does help the company stay competitive when prices drop. You don't want to be caught with a price drop on old inventory, and end up being significantly more expensive than the competition, and unable to clear out that inventory.

At least in the USA, once you set your accounting method, you cannot change it.
Click to expand...

Here in this tiny island in the Pacific, we import our fuel from the outside, when gasoline price jumped globally several years ago, people pointed out that we have not received new imported fuel yet, so why on earth have the prices gone up at the pumps. People were furious, but being a small island, people just took it in the ass.
 
mt2e said:
FYI, Crucial m4 128 + Samsung 830 128, 4 years strong, ntf
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Still running a Crucial M4 in one of my machines too.. All this talk of SSDs dieing made me think of it's age. Nothing worth backing up on there luckily.
 
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