Is it me or does it seem like SSD prices have been higher than they were a few months ago? I tried searching for reasons why this might be the case but didn't find anything. I've been looking for a deal on a 256GB SSD to spend my Xmas money on but I haven't seen any deals or decent prices lately.
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SSD prices
- Thread starter Dexter007
- Start date
There were a lot of sales during the Black Friday period, like the Samsung 840 500gb and the Vertex4 512gb, both were $299 for a very short period of time. But you are right, I was following ssd pricing for the last 8 months in anticipation of picking one up after I got my B'day and Christmas presents (typicaly I get some cash from various relatives). Unfortuanately my B'day was two days after the black friday sales.
Prices seem to be slowly coming back down a bit as stock levels come back up though.
Prices seem to be slowly coming back down a bit as stock levels come back up though.
I plan on getting a second 128GB next time there's a good sale on the M4s. I feel like 2x128GB is a better deal than 1x256GB because you can use them in parallel on separate sata ports. Also it's great when one of the drives die you still have one to use while you wait for the other to come back from RMA.
I see this quoted a lot, but it isn't necessarily the case for computer components its attributed to.
In terms of SSDs in the consumer market, lower prices generally mean more sales than higher prices. Christmas discounts means more sales, thus potentially lower supply (but not necessarily), yet lower prices. Supply quantity & demand alone does totally determine pricing.
Basically, the top of the line of computer anything (as to SSDs, highest capacity and/or enterprise class vs consumer) will be proportionally more expensive than mid to low range. Proportions which go above accounting for the increased component costs.
I'd personally wait a bit if pricing is a concern. With Micron announcing recently a line of drives with a 960GB drive costing under $600, it almost certainly will drive down other SSD prices.
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For comparison shopping, be sure to check out meta shopping sites that find several vendors for a particular product search. In addition to Amazon. Also be aware that not every current "mid size" SSD is exactly rated at 256GB. For example, the Samsung 840 is 250GB (the more expensive 840 Pro is 256GB).
drescherjm
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DRAMeXchange has sent a me few emails about the price of NAND increasing from the lows it hit a few months ago. Their reason was reduced supply.
Ah OK.
Well, I've mainly been focused on the 840 Pro lately (won the HardOCP Gold award). Right now, though, its $250 at Amazon.
The 840 is a lot less expensive; $178 for the 250GB. But it isn't quite in the same league; its more of a basic consumer SSD as opposed to the "enthusiast" Pro. 3 year warranty vs. 5 years for the Pro, somewhat lower performance, etc. Still won the HardOCP Silver award, though. And more than good enough for games.
Memory types: previous generation (the 830) -- 27nm MLC NAND. 840 Pro -- 21mm MLC NAND. 840 non-Pro: new 21mm TLC ("Triple Level Cell") NAND. Which may or may not be of issue; no other SSD uses TLC yet and HardOCP expressed a couple of reservations while still giving it the Silver award. One of the review comments that might relive some doubts: "By most rough math estimates, TLC should last 7 years for the 250 and 500GB variants". You do have the 3 year warranty as well. And a Samsung-made SSD controller, which doesn't have the history of unreliability that many SandForce controller drives do.
I'd personally wait a bit for the aforementioned price pressure to come into effect and go for the 840 Pro when the price comes down (or now if your gift card covers it). Samsung might even release a 1 TB drive as well to help lower pricing.
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Thanks for the explanation of some differences in memory. Out of curiosity, why did Samsung use a different NAND in the 840? Faster than MLC, cheaper? $178 is closer to the price point I was hoping for a ~256GB drive. I think I'll wait a while to see if prices come down.
The TLC nand used in the 840 costs less than the MLC nand used in the 840 Pro. However, it will not take as many write cycles as the MLC. Hence the 3yr vs 5yr waranty. The 840 is rated for 1.500.000 hours , the 840 Pro for 2.000.000. The reviews I've read say that the 840 should last at least 7 years if you write 20 gig a day to them. Of course if you write less the lifetime should be longer.
I purchased 3 Intel SSD's one of which is an enterprise version I use at work. The prices are through the roof still and Im not seeing the reason why other then people simply don't voice their bemusement. Its been several years now and most HDD manufacturers have transitioned over to SSD type. I do agree that the prices have dropped significantly but SSD won't go mainstream until prices fall to an affordable price. No one thinks its a good idea to pay $200 for a 160Gb SSD when you can get almost 4Tb at that price. At those storage sizes, people are not using them as the main hard drive but as a storage unit.
Thanks, bernaby. The vanilla 840 would probably be fine for me if I'm just using it as a games drive. I wouldn't be moving anywhere near 20GB a day and 7 years is long time in terms of technology. By that time I would have multiple drives replace the 840. Something to consider.
How does the vanilla 840 compare to a Crucial M4 or the 840 Pro in terms of speed?
How does the vanilla 840 compare to a Crucial M4 or the 840 Pro in terms of speed?
Yes, and this is done on purpose because current prices are too low for the manufacturers.
My 840 500GB benchmarks faster than my 256GB M4. My 256GB M4 is about the same as my 512GB M4.
I can post benches later if you want.
The 840 is better with quite few benchmarks than the m4, although there are a few where the m4 beats the 840.The 840 Pro is better. There is a recent review of the 840 500gb on Hard OCP if you would like to look for yourself. Bottom line though is I doubt you would see a difference for gaming. I just got my 840 last week and so far I am impressed. Of course this is my first ssd so the difference from a traditional HDD would be astounding no matter which ssd I was using. Once you get away from all the nitpicking about benchmark performance the point comes down to this.....Any ssd will blow the doors off a spinning disc. Buy a drive whose size fits your needs, from a reputable manufacturer, at a price point that you can swing and I think you will be very happy. 5 to 7 years from now they will most likely be selling 1 terrabyte ssd's for what a 256 gb unit is going for now.
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tradbourne
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Why can't somebody glue a 256 GB SSD to a 3-4 TB HD, and make them operate like one unit. The user just uses it, and it uses the 256 GB SSD like high speed cache, moving the data to the slower speed platters for archival when nothing else is going on.
This should be an OS feature....
This should be an OS feature....
Well you can always start your own NAND foundry and lower the prices, of course it will then be difficult to pay off your billions of investment.
Ocellaris
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You already voiced your opinion by purchasing three drives, so clearly they were worth it to you.
Yeah most of my customers are more than happy to pay for a SSD when I show them my machines running with them.
Most folks don't have 4TB of data. The average of my customers in the real world is probably 70GB!
It's not all about hoarding torrents.
Most folks don't have 4TB of data. The average of my customers in the real world is probably 70GB!
It's not all about hoarding torrents.
That isn't necessarily the case. Daily spot prices on flash RAM on that site have been going up and down since you mentioned it here, not continually up. Today, for example, the "session price" for "32Gb 4Gx8 MLC" is down a full 1%.
What's actually driving the increased pricing lately (in the 4th quarter of 2012) is apparently OCZ stopping aggressively discounting drives to gain market share for them. Its detailed at Techreport here. In the article: "OCZ CEO Ryan Petersen was ousted this fall, in part for "boosting" discount programs to increase market share. Those programs resulted in substantial losses for the company, and OCZ has pursued a more conservative pricing strategy ever since. The competition, it seems, has been eager to follow."
Again, with Micron coming out with a 1TB SSD with a purported MSRP of "below $600" around March (or later), its almost certainly going to add pricing pressure again on all SSDs.
Ocellaris
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Prices will go down again. Fluctuating memory prices with an overall trend downward has been a persistent thing in the PC world for at least the last 15 years. This isn't going to change. In another X number of months, people will be going "LOL remember when we paid $150 for a 256GB drive? You can get a 512GB for that now!"
Yep.
Over $200 for a 80gb 3 years or so ago, now a 256gb 840 PRO is damn close to that and a LOT faster.
I wish I would have adopted SSD more than 3 years ago the performance IMHO greatly outweighs the couple hundred bucks it cost.
blastingcap
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One word: Laptops.
But I agree, even for laptops, if you are on a budget, get a modest SSD and an external HDD. Yes it's less convenient, but you save a bundle. The smaller external HDDs aren't even that big these days so it's not as bad as it used to be for portability.
I don't see SSD's coming down in price soon. I think manufacturers figured out that they wont get the storage sizes as they do out of spinners. SSD's are primarily used to run OS and programs. Otherwise I think we'll see hybrid drives before we see cheap SSD's..
When SSD prices over the past few quarters are examined in excruciating detail, the reason prices went down so far in the first three quarters of 2012 is that OCZ's CEO reduced their SSD prices in order to boost market share, and the rest of the SSD field had to follow their prices down. After he got fired (in part for reducing the SSD prices too low), OCZ raised their SSD prices in Q4, and the rest of the field followed.
TL;DR: OCZ is in fact to blame for the low SSD prices in Q3 2012 and the higher prices now.
TL;DR: OCZ is in fact to blame for the low SSD prices in Q3 2012 and the higher prices now.
Prices in the US are going to be higher because our TAX rates are now higher in 2013 due to corrupt politicians. It doesn't help that we now have to cover the additional taxes as the vendors are simply going to pass that on to us. Rules of the Economy my friends. And I am sure there are a ton of other factors that cause this.