Why did SSD prices drop all of a sudden?

[MyName13]

The new price of 250 GB SSDs was the old price of 120 GB SSDs (the same thing is true for 250 GB and 500 GB capacities), why did prices drop?

[homeap5]

Better question is - why prices remained unchanged so long.

I think more and more producers starts making cheap SSD.

I bought 500 GB SSD not so long ago and now i'm annoyed too.

[ZeouLs]

I would say the market is saturated and they sold a good amount of products for a high price so they started beeing competitiv between manufacturers to undercut the other company and sell even more. It might also have to do with the fact that games and videos, programms they grow more and more in size (I'm looking at you Destiny 2 and GTA, 4k/8k footage) and it's pretty common to have severel TB of storage in ones PC and tbh if you can have a lets say 1TB HDD for the lets assume halft the price of a 256GB SSD, you might aswell get the smallest SSD for your OS and use the HDD for everything else to lower the cost. That comes in handy for budget builds and people who just need some extra space but dont want to spend a fortune. Obviously Samsung and all the other manufacturers want their products to be used instead of cheap HDDs that offer more storage for less money. So what do they do? They lower the price to compete with the HDD after they already made a fortune with the higher prices when the technology was all new. tl;dr the manufacturers compete against each other + against HDD manufacturers like Seagate or WD

[Mooshi]

SSDs have been dirt cheap even with markup compared to what they cost nearly a decade ago. I mean, my 1TB Crucial drive cost the same as a 120GB did in 2011.

[MyName13]

20 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

Better question is - why prices remained unchanged so long.

I think more and more producers starts making cheap SSD.

I bought 500 GB SSD not so long ago and now i'm annoyed too.

That is a better question.Why have they remained so high when compared to HDDs ever since they got on the market?One would think that a purely electronic component would be easier to design and manufacture than a mechanical component that can break far more easily.

 

2 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

SSDs have been dirt cheap even with markup compared to what they cost nearly a decade ago. I mean, my 1TB Crucial drive cost the same as a 120GB did in 2011.

That is still too expensive when compared to HDDs.

[Mooshi]

32 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

That is a better question.Why have they remained so high when compared to HDDs ever since they got on the market?One would think that a purely electronic component would be easier to design and manufacture than a mechanical component that can break far more easily.

 

That is still too expensive when compared to HDDs.

Hard drive and SSD will never be in the same realm of price. Just like how there are still DVDs even though Blu Ray is better.

[MyName13]

29 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

Hard drive and SSD will never be in the same realm of price.

Why not?

[homeap5]

1 hour ago, Mooshi said:

Hard drive and SSD will never be in the same realm of price.

And HDD never be cheap.

 

Real question is - how long until last company stops making HDD.

 

[Burnshadow]

Yeah, I had the same question - hardware does get cheaper over time, but wanted to know the exact reason. I've asked the consultant on hardware and tech accessories at besttechexpert.guide and they explained to me that over time the manufacturing got a bit more streamlined and cheaper and also the development of a new generation of SSD's - the ones that use PCI-e port - cheapened the previous type of hardware. Although they advised me that for a casual user like me it's not important to go for the PCI-e, a SATA connection will be more than enough.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

On 7/19/2018 at 2:36 AM, homeap5 said:

Real question is - how long until last company stops making HDD.

When the price of SSDs is competive with HDDs, when consumer SSDs have the capacity of consumer HDDs, and when HDDs no longer can be made in larger capacity while SSDs can.

[IAnthonyFX]

what is the current price references for a 250 500 and 1tb sata ssd?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

6 hours ago, Burnshadow said:

Yeah, I had the same question - hardware does get cheaper over time, but wanted to know the exact reason. I've asked the consultant on hardware and tech accessories at besttechexpert.guide and they explained to me that over time the manufacturing got a bit more streamlined and cheaper and also the development of a new generation of SSD's - the ones that use PCI-e port - cheapened the previous type of hardware. Although they advised me that for a casual user like me it's not important to go for the PCI-e, a SATA connection will be more than enough.

Whenever a new product is introduced, R&D (Research and Development) and new tooling (the new equipment, including factories, that must be made and installed to make the new product) costs have to be recovered within a certain amount of time. That cost recovery is tacked onto the new product. Once the R&D and tooling costs have been recovered, manufacturers can lower the price of the product. The more a new product sells, the sooner recovery can occur.

 

High volume sales can allow for smaller profit margins, allowing prices to be lowered. Competition also has an effect on pricing. Supply and demand can affect pricing. Other factors, such as interruptions in the raw materials supply change (such as the recent alleged NAND shortage and now the worldwide silica sand shortage) can affect pricing.

[jefire411]

On 7/19/2018 at 4:01 AM, homeap5 said:

Better question is - why prices remained unchanged so long.

I think more and more producers starts making cheap SSD.

I bought 500 GB SSD not so long ago and now i'm annoyed too.

I payed about $161 for a Samsung 850 evo 500 gb december of 2017

[MyName13]

4 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Whenever a new product is introduced, R&D (Research and Development) and new tooling (the new equipment, including factories, that must be made and installed to make the new product) costs have to be recovered within a certain amount of time. That cost recovery is tacked onto the new product. Once the R&D and tooling costs have been recovered, manufacturers can lower the price of the product. The more a new product sells, the sooner recovery can occur.

 

High volume sales can allow for smaller profit margins, allowing prices to be lowered. Competition also has an effect on pricing. Supply and demand can affect pricing. Other factors, such as interruptions in the raw materials supply change (such as the recent alleged NAND shortage and now the worldwide silica sand shortage) can affect pricing.

We've had SSDs since when?Maybe 2010?Seriously, who released the first mainstream SSD (not talking about those released in the last century) and when?

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 7/19/2018 at 1:24 AM, MyName13 said:

That is a better question.Why have they remained so high when compared to HDDs ever since they got on the market?One would think that a purely electronic component would be easier to design and manufacture than a mechanical component that can break far more easily.

Hard drives for the last 20 or so years has remained relatively unchanged as far as the bulk of the components go. You still have a metal enclosure, glass disks, the formula for the metal coating likely hasn't changed much, etc. Basically like 80% of manufacturing processes for hard drives hasn't changed at all. There's also the fact that HDD technology hasn't really changed dramatically since ever. The only thing's that changed are the finer details to cram in more data.

 

SSDs still evolving. In the past eight years they've been through three standardized form factors, so it takes time and resources to ramp up your factories for mass production. Not to mention fabrication plants needed to manufacture ICs like flash chips are much more expensive than a CNC machine needed to churn out hard drive chassis. And again, the process for HDDs hasn't changed in relatively forever, so it's stupid cheap at this point.