Good time to stock-pile SSDs? Or better times ahead?

[VirtualLarry]

Some NAND fabs are supposedly cutting back expansion plans, to try to stop the price of NAND dropping to the point that it becomes less than profitable, but right now seems kind of like, or on the cusp of, a "sweet spot" for buying SSDs.

Plus, as more production moves to QLC NAND and yields on that ramp up, it would seem prudent if you want a TLC (who would have ever thought that we would value TLC NAND drives, LOL), drive, to purchase one NOW, or soon.

Budget SATA SSDs are dropping to $87 so far, and Intel 660p QLC M.2 NVMe has dropped to $90 or so for a 1TB or $182 for a 2TB drive.

So, wise NAND / SSD Gurus, what does this industry hold?

Or are inexpensive 4TB drives "right around the corner", and we would be wasteful to purchase a 2TB drive today?

I noticed that 512GB-class budget SATA SSDs are dropping BELOW $50, soon to approach $40? For a 512GB SSD, that's not too shabby. It wasn't so long ago that 120GB SSD were that price.

 

[amd6502]

Yeah, those 256G drives with SLC cache at $30 seem like a sweet deal. I love Sillycone Power (SP A55) and got two recently. Very durable for SSD's and good material for builds.

 

[Viper GTS]

It is never a good time to stockpile technology. Yes there are time periods where everybody wishes they bought more DDR4 or whatever 'when it was cheap' but in the long run all of this trends to worthless. Buy it when you need it or maybe for the very short term future. No matter how cheap it seems today it will always be even cheaper at some point in the future.

Viper GTS

 

[Rifter]

It is never a good time to stockpile technology. Yes there are time periods where everybody wishes they bought more DDR4 or whatever 'when it was cheap' but in the long run all of this trends to worthless. Buy it when you need it or maybe for the very short term future. No matter how cheap it seems today it will always be even cheaper at some point in the future.

Viper GTS

Agreed

 

[Oyeve]

I've been hoarding 1TB and 2TB ssds for the last couple of years. My main system has 6 SSD drives and I have a few just in case. When I see a good deal on reputable drives I grab em. One never knows.

 

[amd6502]

It is never a good time to stockpile technology. Yes there are time periods where everybody wishes they bought more DDR4 or whatever 'when it was cheap' but in the long run all of this trends to worthless. Buy it when you need it or maybe for the very short term future. No matter how cheap it seems today it will always be even cheaper at some point in the future.

Viper GTS

Generally so. Usually.

I stockpiled DDR3 during a time of overcapacity, when it was between $28 and $35 per 2x4GB pair, to see the prices more than double over the next few years. Though we've come off the top, it's still high; so these times of bad deals can last for years and years.

If there is an overcapacity of SSD's today and the price is right I don't see a reason not to have a super tiny stock for the next build or two.

Also, Trump's poker game with China could go horribly wrong, leading to an Argentina style scenario. Moore's law has also ended, and we are plateauing in terms of tech. These trends give the traditional rule-of-thumb to never stockpile tech a much worse rating.

I would like memristor storage but I don't see this happening in under five years. So I say, don't stockpile but take the manufacturers up on a good bargain a little now and then.

 

[quartzz1]

agree with what Viper said....also I used to work for an OEM, the boss of the company stockpiled slot Pentium 2 mbd's because he heard they were in short supply. Then socket came out. and the stockpiled slot boards were basically binned (moral of the story, if you stockpile 'this', 'that' will be the next thing)

the only reason I'd buy stuff in a hurry, is if I knew it was a replacement part that wasn't manufactured anymore, for a possible future failure of that part in my current system

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've still got a "stockpile" of 3.5" floppy disks. No, really. :|

 

[cbn]

One Wildcard I am wondering about:

YMTC NAND

 

[cbn]

Here is a tidbit from Digitimes:

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20190325PD207.html

China's Yangtze Memory Technology (YMTC) is set to kick off volume production of 64-layer 3D NAND flash chips by the end of 2019 as scheduled, despite prices for such memory products continuing sliding down.

P.S. Anandtech did some great reporting on YMTC NAND when the company presented at FMS 2018--> https://www.anandtech.com/show/1318...chnology-keynote-live-blog-unleashing-3d-nand

 

[cbn]

https://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/7289.html

TrendForce points out that YMTC has already sent examples to some of its customers and controller suppliers in 1Q, focusing on domestic sales in the early stages. They have also wrapped up construction of their Wuhan plant, and have allocated limited capacity to 32-layer products, waiting until the mass production of 64-layer production to switch to a more proactive stance and expand capacity. Plans are to enlarge production capacity in 2020, bring wafer production up to at least 60K/m. Although this can't be considered large compared to other competitors, who boast capacities of over 200K/m, it is still expected to have a certain impact on NAND flash market prices and prolong the falling trend.

Analyses by TrendForce show that China is clear in its resolve to deploy new production capacity in hopes of achieving self-sufficiency. Other international suppliers have opened up new plants in anticipation of the competition post-2020, including Samsung's phase 2 investment into its Xi' An plant, Toshiba's new Iwate fab, Micron's third plant in Singapore, SK Hynix's utilization of the remaining space in the M15 plant and the following M16 plant etc. One may expect the price competition to get ugly after suppliers' capacities have risen.

In contrast to other suppliers who've taken to developing 9x-layer products as their first move, YMTC chose to tackle 128-layer products straight on to narrow the gap between them and other suppliers; other major players will be mass producing 128-layer products further down the timeline in 2020. Despite the considerable technological gap between YMTC and other suppliers, YMTC's impact on the future market is inevitable and unstoppable.

^^^ According to that I would hold off on any plans to stockpile in 2019 (and 2020).

 

[bononos]

It is never a good time to stockpile technology. Yes there are time periods where everybody wishes they bought more DDR4 or whatever 'when it was cheap' but in the long run all of this trends to worthless. Buy it when you need it or maybe for the very short term future. No matter how cheap it seems today it will always be even cheaper at some point in the future.
Viper GTS

In hindsight I think buying MLC ssds was a good idea when later TLC ssd were more expensive and lousier.

 

[NTMBK]

I knew from the thread title that this would be a Larry post Larry, stop hoarding junk!

 

[quartzz1]

I've still got a "stockpile" of 3.5" floppy disks. No, really. :|

can you find an art student that will pay bucks for them? I think I've got about £30 of CD storage wallets somewhere...

 

[KentState]

The problem with stock piling is that the capacities are rather small compared to the next jump. Like you said, the 1TB drives of today, won't be much less than the bargain basement 4TB drives of tomorrow. Probably best to hoard cash right now as we are long overdue for a recession, at which point you can pick up a bunch of stock.

 

[Maxima1]

It probably won't start getting better for them until somewhere in 2021 (read: YMTC). It definitely isn't good time to stock up now. There's still a significant drop coming through the end of this year.

 

[PingSpike]

It is never a good time to stockpile technology. Yes there are time periods where everybody wishes they bought more DDR4 or whatever 'when it was cheap' but in the long run all of this trends to worthless. Buy it when you need it or maybe for the very short term future. No matter how cheap it seems today it will always be even cheaper at some point in the future.

Viper GTS

In the long run we're all dead anyway.

But things have been weird were technology in the past few years that makes this conventional wisdom not seem quite as wise. We've seen DDR4 spike and stay spiked for a couple years? Same thing basically happened with HDDs which sort of stopped getting cheaper for awhile. We saw GPUs become so expensive during the mining boom that you would have made a lot of money just unloading your stockpile, only for them to basically just come back to their old price and be followed up with more expensive ones. We saw Intel cpus introduced that went up in price due to shortages and were in some cases replaced by new models with less features and the same price. Who's to say the same might not happen with SSDs? They've already replaced old MLC models with arguably crappier TLC models.

I think you're better off waiting until it seems like prices are going up from a bottom to stock up though rather than trying to catch a falling knife.

 

[Viper GTS]

In the long run we're all dead anyway.

But things have been weird were technology in the past few years that makes this conventional wisdom not seem quite as wise. We've seen DDR4 spike and stay spiked for a couple years? Same thing basically happened with HDDs which sort of stopped getting cheaper for awhile. We saw GPUs become so expensive during the mining boom that you would have made a lot of money just unloading your stockpile, only for them to basically just come back to their old price and be followed up with more expensive ones. We saw Intel cpus introduced that went up in price due to shortages and were in some cases replaced by new models with less features and the same price. Who's to say the same might not happen with SSDs? They've already replaced old MLC models with arguably crappier TLC models.

I think you're better off waiting until it seems like prices are going up from a bottom to stock up though rather than trying to catch a falling knife.

All of these are temporary weirdness. Sure, you could have made a lot of money by predicting it. Then again if you could have predicted that you'd have just bought Bitcoin instead.

The price is not the real issue here, it's the never ending march of technological progress.

All of those (rightfully) argued superior SLC/MLC drives? They're tiny. And on old generation controllers and buses. And now Optane exists. So keep using your old MLC drives the rest of us have moved on.

All that DDR4 you would have stockpiled because of the price spike? It would have been all 8 or 16 GB DIMMs. I don't know about you guys but I am done buying 16 GB DIMMs. Nothing but >=32 from here on out. Oh, and it would need to be ECC because Threadripper.

Even if you managed to catch the bottom of SSD or DDR4 pricing for a particular moment in time, and by some weird quirk they are guaranteed to never be cheaper than that again... You're still stuck with obsolete stuff that you won't actually want to use. DDR5 is coming. PCIe 4.0 SSDs are imminent.

My grandparents bought a pallet of 100W lightbulbs when they were banned. LEDs are pretty awesome now and dirt cheap.

So let me add to my original statement:

Even if it is never monetarily worthless there will always be a new technology that will render the stockpile obsolete. Technologically worthless is just as bad as monetarily worthless.

Viper GTS