When are the SSDs gonna come down in price?

[dennilfloss]

As in like half of the prices we see advertised today? They are currently outrageously expensive. Select one for a laptop you are considering buying and this notebook might almost double in price.

 

[Elixer]

Not for a very long time.
NAND is still very expensive, and until they start to make many more units, prices are only going to trickle down at a snails pace.

 

[Coup27]

Unfortunately I disagree that they are 'expensive'.

SSDs have already had their prices driven down too low in an effort to make them more affordable, and we have been repaid by umteen firmware bugs by everybody.

Whilst they are expensive compared to a HDD, they are not a HDD, and the current market prices reflect that.

You also must be looking at some very cheap laptops if a SSD doubles the overall price. An 80GB Intel 320 isn't double the price of a decent laptop, but it would double the speed compared to the 5400rpm HDD inside it.

 

[HeXen]

Considering how smooth it makes the OS and apps seem, i think their worth every penny.
I just use HDD for backup and game installs. SSD for Windows/Linux and general applications.
its amazing how much of a bottlneck a HDD can make despite the rest of your hardware.

 

[Old Hippie]

When are the SSDs gonna come down in price?

The day after you start caring?

 

[Blain]

When are the SSDs gonna come down in price?
As in like half of the prices we see advertised today?

Tuesday, April 9th 2013

 

[Eug]

Actually, I just bought my first SSD yesterday because the prices have already come down in price so much. I had been watching from the sidelines for the last couple of years because I didn't want to spend more than about $100, but the ones in that price range were 32 GB or less... until recently.

So, yesterday I picked up a 64 GB Kingston drive for CAD$82. I suspect that sometime in 2012 we'll see 120+ GB drives in the sub $100 category on sale, too. Or maybe even on Black Friday or Boxing Day.

 

[Michael Meio]

SSD's are already going down in price.

Now, if what you expect is a dramatic price cut of around 40%, it will take a at least a year, so I think Q4 2012 for it to happen..

The question is which type of SSD will see such change?.. The SataII class and, of course, the smaller drives.

The SataIII big drives will remain expensive because more capacity will be squeezed in and there's huge demand for that. Some SataIII's with small capacity will be cheaper by at least 30% by then.

Now, the reason why people see this technology as expensive is because we have the tendency to compare the "uncomparable". Please do not put together HDD and SDD with economics in the same equation. These are very different things and you could only compare their performance but don't mix the price in there because the HDD's price is victim of SSD's technology and advantage at present. Picture for a moment a world without SSD.. that it had never existed and not foreseeable ever.. How much do you think a HDD would cost?... yes, is that simple.

In any case, cheaper is kind of tricky: You will be paying the same USD$300 for a top line SDD now, next year and at least for 2 years. It will just be bigger and perhaps 20% faster. That, unless another controller manufacturer jumps in fast enough to disturb the balance.. Then, there will be a more dramatic change. There are many controller manufacturers baking cool stuff at this moment but their muffins will see the streets Q3 2012. The market needs time to adjust, so it's effect will hit you in Q2, 2013.

In 2014, you'll be laughing if you remember this post or find it accidentally. Storage performance/price worries will be a thing of the past, just like RAM is today.

 

[Eug]

The good news is that current SATA II models are already hella fast compared to hard disk drives, so anyone upgrading in that route should be pleased with the upgrade in terms of speed. 200+ MB/s transfer rates with 0.3 ms seek times make for a pretty nice combination.

Plus many older machines needing such upgrades don't even support SATA III anyway, so a SATA II solution is perfect in this context.

 

[Kenmitch]

Compared to the price of HDD's when they first came out SSD's are reasonably priced

 

[Coup27]

Ignore this post. Tried to delete it but cant figure out how.

 

[corkyg]

Compared to the price of HDD's when they first came out SSD's are reasonably priced

This is true! I do recall pating close to $900 for a spindle HDD in 1991 - I believe it was 500 MB (not GB!)

If the economy continues as predicted, there will be major price cuts in 2012 - but, then you may not have money to spend on such things.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

In July of 2010 we bought a couple Vertex 2 120GB drives at work for something like $430 each. You can buy those same drives today for less than $180 each. The newest version, the Vertex 3 120GB, is $220 ($199 after rebate).

If you can't appreciate a >50% price decline in one year's time then I don't know what to tell you. There is no way you could be taken even remotely seriously saying prices today are "outrageously expensive". You'd have to be either poor or an extreme cheapskate.

I don't think we'll continue to see the same rate of decline in prices, but it's hard to say. If you wanna sit on the sidelines for another year, you can be sure prices will be lower next year. But when is that *not* true with any computer equipment?

 

[deimos3428]

You're more likely to see twice the capacity for the same price before you'll see the same capacity at half the price, if that's what you're asking.

 

[jjmIII]

yesterday...

 

[BrightCandle]

They should halve about every 24 months or so. The dominating price factor is the density of the transistors and for now they are halving the space they take every 2 years, roughly.

There is however still a battle on the logic on which SSD's run, so the core principles of cost and number of channels could change with time changing the prices.

 

[Modelworks]

when the factories move to phase change memory prices should drop to current HD levels, so far looks like that is 2013.

 

[Michael Meio]

On a side note, Samsung announced 30nm DDR memory chips are on the ringing ovens..

http://www.physorg.com/news184266307.html

..so, here we go again: This is not the same technology but still is a step forward on memory chip production which again will be sold at "high" prices for starters but it will drop later and it should do so very fast simply because the market is saturated with already "good" memory.

On the NAND chips (the ones SSD drives use), there are 19nm technology being produced (SanDisk / Toshiba partnership). This is important because the industry has not standardized so far. Patriot builds it's Wildfire models on 25nm NAND chips, while INTEL does it with 32nm ones in it's 510 series.

What we see is that while the memory chips vary, the controller is usually the same (at least for the top performers) SandForce SF-2281. Soon, we will have other controllers on the market for this segment, then they will migrate from the disk to the motherboard and finally they will come in to populate the CPU real estate, making it faster on each moving.

The controller is still the issue holding the horse (price-wise). As soon as new controllers come around, we will see the drop.

We're witnessing a revolution in the components part which strangely has not penetrated the form factor standards.. It's about time for us to see some new format out there.. ATX is outdated from this perspective. There have been some attempts but I guess the market is not dynamic enough for it to finally happen.

 

[Insomniator]

I don't know... but i use an SSD at work and I can't tell the freakin difference despite people constantly saying its so much better.

Systems are very similar except one has a 128GB Samsung SSD and the other a 1TB Samsung F3 drive... you know what... chrome opens instantly on both. Hell almost everything on both computers do. I imagine the SSD would make loading times in SC2 quicker but who cares about that.

 

[Eug]

I don't know... but i use an SSD at work and I can't tell the freakin difference despite people constantly saying its so much better.

MBP SSD vs HDD

However, that's a 2.5" drive comparison. A 3.5" 7200 rpm drive would fare better, but an SSD is still faster.

 

[Spikesoldier]

im guessing that people forgot that the 80GB x25-m from intel debuted at $649. when G2 came out, this was slashed to ~$229.

 

[taltamir]

The controller is still the issue holding the horse (price-wise). As soon as new controllers come around, we will see the drop.

Controllers affect the speed, not the cost.
Controllers are dirt cheap, mostly I see listed prices in the under 10$ range, although very recently I saw a claim that one controller costs as high as 30$. The NAND chips are very very expensive, profit margins are very low for SSD assemblers (understandable considering how all they contribute is a fake sense of competition), where the vast majority of the money goes to pay for the very expensive NAND chips.

The issue with NAND chips is simply that demand far outstrips supply. Fabs are being built and NAND manufactured but demand is ever growing, and only a very small percentage of it is for SSD drives for computers. Most goes for other tech devices, like digital cameras, smart phones, music players, GPS devices, gaming consoles, etc, etc. Last I saw less than 10% of manufactured NAND went into SSD manufacturing.

 

[darkewaffle]

They're already significantly less expensive than they were even a year ago. You can get down to almost a $1/1GB anymore on some drives with a rebate.

 

[Chaosblade02]

Eventually they will probably replace standard HDDs. In 10 years time or so you will probably be able to get a 2 or 3 TB SSD for the same price as you pay for a 128GB one now.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, locally, older drives can be had for under < $1.20 per GB. I think the real tipping point is when 120 GB drives are commonly $99.99, or 83 cents per GB.

Excluding Black Friday, I think this will happen in 2012.