RAM and SSD prices soon to plummet due to oversuply

[AndreiArgeanu]

Summary

 

 RAM and SSD prices soon to fall due to oversupply after manufacturers stocked up way too much due to the fears of the pandemic

Quotes

Quote

Despite the traditional peak season for electronics sales and the release of Apple's new iPhones in 3Q20, the quarterly decline in NAND flash ASP [average selling price] will likely reach 10 percent, due to the client end's excess inventory under the impact of the pandemic

 

The reason for the price decline comes down to supply and demand. There's too much memory around and manufacturers aren't buying it—both Western Digital and Micron are just two firms that have slowed their purchasing.

 

Deutsche Bank analyst Sidney Ho writes (via Barron's) that data centers and other enterprise customers stockpiled memory devices at the start of the pandemic over fears of a future shortage. That's caused an oversupply, meaning less demand from customers in the coming quarters.

 

My thoughts

 This could be great to be honest, SSD prices lowering and ram prices as well with the 3000 series nvidia gpus and AMD's new GPU's and CPU's could make for the perfect time to build a new system, or upgrade your current one.

 

Sources

TechSpot DRAMeXchange

[EridanusSV]

Might be able to get a complete 64GB RAM set instead of waiting for the next paycheck. This is dope.

[minibois]

Do we really expect the customer to see this price difference? I wouldn't be surprised if all the middle-men (suppliers, stores, etc.) to gobble up some of that savings.

But I wouldn't mind getting some more RAM and maybe another SSD.

 

Although I really am looking for a price reduction in large (non-SMR preferably) HDD's.

[rockking1379]

2 minutes ago, EridanusSV said:

Might be able to get a complete 64GB RAM set instead of waiting for the next paycheck. This is dope.

For real! I’m always down for cheaper hardware that still performs great. Might be time to plan that server build and start snagging parts 

[TetraSky]

Cue manufacturers slowing down production in order to get prices back up. That or a mystery "fire" or "flood" will suddenly happen and they "lose" 50% of their supply out of nowhere.

 

IMO, more so than RAM, I am more excited to see SSD prices fall. If 1TB or more SSDs becomes as cheap(or cheaper) as HDDs... That'd be great.

[rcmaehl]

SSDs prices have BEEN PLUMMETING on r/buildapcsales.

 

1TB TLC for $70-80

If it gets any lower I don't think my wallet could take it

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

I guess I'm going to get my nvme SSD early.

[thefilthycheese]

I'll believe it when I see it to be honest, of course the fact that next gen consoles will run entirely on ssd's is gonna help with boosting the supply of ssd's in the market in general but every time an article like this comes out it's usually bogus and doesn't apply to us as consumers directly but rather OEM's and so on. 

[Kisai]

40 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Summary

 

 

My thoughts

 This could be great to be honest, SSD prices lowering and ram prices as well with the 3000 series nvidia gpus and AMD's new GPU's and CPU's could make for the perfect time to build a new system, or upgrade your current one.

 

Sources

TechSpot DRAMeXchange

This is why I say wait for the tail-end of a technology's lifespan and just max it out rather than over-spend on new tech. If you have a DDR4 system, then max out the RAM if you have the money, and then hang onto the system till 2024.

 

[Tristerin]

I  hardware

[Trik'Stari]

[nick name]

What I paid for an NVMe SSD and RAM two years ago is double what I would pay today.  

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, EridanusSV said:

Might be able to get a complete 64GB RAM set instead of waiting for the next paycheck. This is dope.

You have use for 64gb of ram?

[CTR640]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

You have use for 64gb of ram?

Me no. But if the price is gud, why not.

 

Spoiler

CHROOOOOOOOOOME YOU FUCKING RAM EATING MONSTER!!!!!

 

[leadeater]

Oh know what terrible news, now I'm going to have to buy SSDs and RAM.

[Bombastinator]

Starting to sound like this glut won’t last very long.  It’s over stockpiling not over production. 

[Vishera]

Thanks for the info,but SSDs are not the storage solution for me,I prefer longevity over durability,SSDs cells eventually wear out completely,as for hard drives you have to wait for a mechanical component to fail,and if there is no damage to the platter it can be fixed.

[Ginger Penguin]

Is there a way to find out when an SSD is going to fail given they have a pretty much set write endurance? It seems if that's possible it would be easier to plan for than a mechanical drive. I saw the new SK Hynix drives are using 4D NAND that's set to have much higher write endurance.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, W.D. Stevens said:

Is there a way to find out when an SSD is going to fail given they have a pretty much set write endurance? It seems if that's possible it would be easier to plan for than a mechanical drive. I saw the new SK Hynix drives are using 4D NAND that's set to have much higher write endurance.

Both mechanical drives and SSDs have this.  They’re generally referred to as “drive health” apps.  HDDs are a bit less predictable though.  The general rule with HDDs is that if just about anything shows up on drive health it means things are going to get worse.  Possibly very slowly, possibly very fast.   With SSDs it’s more of a slow grind.  

[vortextech77]

3 hours ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

I guess I'm going to get my nvme SSD early.

Off topic but seeing your pfp makes me hungry.

[mr moose]

1 can dream and hope etc.  If they do drop enough I might even stock up on a few mid size SSD's and 16G  sticks so I don't have to wait for shipping when I upgrade shit at home.

[Kisai]

12 minutes ago, W.D. Stevens said:

Is there a way to find out when an SSD is going to fail given they have a pretty much set write endurance? It seems if that's possible it would be easier to plan for than a mechanical drive. I saw the new SK Hynix drives are using 4D NAND that's set to have much higher write endurance.

S.M.A.R.T has been around since IDE drives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

Quote

A field study at Google^[4] covering over 100,000 consumer-grade drives from December 2005 to August 2006 found correlations between certain S.M.A.R.T. information and annualized failure rates:

• In the 60 days following the first uncorrectable error on a drive (S.M.A.R.T. attribute 0xC6 or 198) detected as a result of an offline scan, the drive was, on average, 39 times more likely to fail than a similar drive for which no such error occurred.
• First errors in reallocations, offline reallocations (S.M.A.R.T. attributes 0xC4 and 0x05 or 196 and 5) and probational counts (S.M.A.R.T. attribute 0xC5 or 197) were also strongly correlated to higher probabilities of failure.
• Conversely, little correlation was found for increased temperature and no correlation for usage level. However, the research showed that a large proportion (56%) of the failed drives failed without recording any count in the "four strong S.M.A.R.T. warnings" identified as scan errors, reallocation count, offline reallocation and probational count.
• Further, 36% of failed drives did so without recording any S.M.A.R.T. error at all, except the temperature, meaning that S.M.A.R.T. data alone was of limited usefulness in anticipating failures.^[5]

That last point is a key point. The temperature is the most important pre-fail warning, and doesn't always trigger a failure mode before it just stops working.

 

With NVMe drives, they have a more predictable life span for wear count, but are still unpredictable for other failures like temperature.

 

Like if you want a drive to last the longest, proper cooling, and proper care is required. For all flash drives, the larger the drive, and the more space kept free, the longer it will last. If you work out of the last 2% of the drive, you're going to wear it out super fast.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

10 minutes ago, vortextech77 said:

Off topic but seeing your pfp makes me hungry.

Ok....

[Bombastinator]

32 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Thanks for the info,but SSDs are not the storage solution for me,I prefer longevity over durability,SSDs cells eventually wear out completely,as for hard drives you have to wait for a mechanical component to fail,and if there is no damage to the platter it can be fixed.

can and should are different things.  Repairing a HDD platter requires a clean room and if you have it done it can cost a grand. 
 

On wear differences between SSDs and HDDs:

Spoiler

It’s not that SSDs necessarily last less long than HDDs.  They can last far longer.  Though also much less long.  It depends on how they are used.   They have a different wear pattern. HDDs wear by revolutions of the platter, so more or less by uptime. If the drive is spinning the drive is wearing.  So by uptime but not by reads and writes.  If you write to a drive nearly constantly a HDD will last longer.  SSDs wear by writes.  Not reads, just writes.  So if you write nearly constantly to a drive an SSD can wear out extremely quickly.  If you DONT though they can last a very very long time. It’s why people put the OS on a SSD.  It gets read every time the computer starts up, but it only gets written to if there’s an update.  So pretty rarely. 

 

[StDragon]

30 minutes ago, Kisai said:

S.M.A.R.T has been around since IDE drives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

That last point is a key point. The temperature is the most important pre-fail warning, and doesn't always trigger a failure mode before it just stops working.

 

With NVMe drives, they have a more predictable life span for wear count, but are still unpredictable for other failures like temperature.

 

Like if you want a drive to last the longest, proper cooling, and proper care is required. For all flash drives, the larger the drive, and the more space kept free, the longer it will last. If you work out of the last 2% of the drive, you're going to wear it out super fast.

S.M.A.R.T is helpful to proactively replace a failing drive...IF you're lucky to have such an advanced warning. More often than not in my experience, an HDD will just outright fail. *poof* dead! Ether can't be enumerated, or click of death (actuator arm seeking the servo track data). Most of the time, it's the logic board that has suffered some surface mount component failure. It's a relatively easy fix that involve just replacing the PCB from a donor drive. Yeah, most HDD errors are attributed to electrical than mechanical.

 

As for SSDs: I've had a SAN that reported 20% life left in a pair (RAID1) used as read/write cache. That was helpful as I was able to proactively replace them.