Question When will SSD prices bottom out?

[aleader]

I keep hearing how the prices are about to drop, but only yesterday have I actually seen evidence that they're going down by any significant amount. I would like to get one more NVMe drive to fill the 2nd slot in my MB, and another for my son's PC. This is a good drive for $120 CAD, $92 USD (I have one already):

https://www.newegg.ca/western-digit...omepage_dailydeals-_-P0_20-250-135-_-12262020

I hate it when I buy something though and it then drops in price by even $10...I'm cheap right into my bones How low will this go? Less than $100 CAD by the end of January, or is this the bottom? The 2TB drives are still double the cost of the 1TB or more, so that's out. Or will the 2TB drives start to see big drops soon? As for brands, I have various WD SSD's, Crucial, Kingston and Samsung (SATA and NVMe). They all work well and have been reliable, so I'm just looking for the best price among those.

 

[UsandThem]

Who knows. I've also read some articles predicting that prices may go lower in Q1 of 2021, but I've also seen SSD pricing has increased over the last few weeks for many drives. All it takes is one major NAND plant to lose power for a few minutes, and pricing could increase instead of go lower.

You can wait and see if the drive you want drops $10 again, or you could buy it and not worry about such a small difference. I've got to buy a new SSD for my son's computer (likely a 1TB Kingston A2000) for $108, which was at $100 before it increased in price. Maybe it falls back to $100 over the next 60 days, or maybe it increases in price a little bit. The key thing it's still a good price and he needs it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

SSD prices have seemed to bump up in terms of USD pricing. Whether that has to do with NAND price voliatility, or that start of Fiat currency hyper-inflation due to QE policies, I can't say.

 

[Jimminy]

You can wait and see if the drive you want drops $10 again, or you could buy it and not worry about such a small difference.

Or we could take up a collection for him, to fund the $10 difference, plus the conversion fee from CAD to USD. And also, don't forget pst, gst, brokerage etc.
Maybe a gofundme account is the best solution?

That's what my Scottish ancestors would have expected!

 

[UsandThem]

Or we could take up a collection for him, to fund the $10 difference, plus the conversion fee from CAD to USD. And also, don't forget pst, gst, brokerage etc.
Maybe a gofundme account is the best solution?

That's what my Scottish ancestors would have expected!

The way this past year has gone, if you need something and it's in stock at a reasonable price, you buy it.

We've seen this with things such as toilet paper, cleaning supplies, CPUs, GPUs, power supplies, toys, food, prescription contact lenses........just about every kind of product in every category out there. Hell, I couldn't find cleaning wipes in stock anywhere for at least 6 months. At this point, I'm not trying to wait for anything I need to see if it will fall a few bucks in price. It's buy, buy, buy!

 

[Jimminy]

The way this past year has gone, if you need something and it's in stock at a reasonable price, you buy it.

Not if you are scottish or canadian, Then you whine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The way this past year has gone, if you need something and it's in stock at a reasonable price, you buy it.

We've seen this with things such as toilet paper, cleaning supplies, CPUs, GPUs, power supplies, toys, food, prescription contact lenses........just about every kind of product in every category out there. Hell, I couldn't find cleaning wipes in stock anywhere for at least 6 months. At this point, I'm not trying to wait for anything I need to see if it will fall a few bucks in price. It's buy, buy, buy!

I hear ya. I've still been stocking up on PC parts like GPUs, when I can find them as MSRP. Possibly to "flip", possibly to sell in builds, possibly to use, if I can find some more room or capacity. (I should move my GTX 1650 4GB D5 cards out of the secondary slots on two of my rigs, and move in some GTX 1660 / Super / Ti cards for more mining capacity.)

 

[MalVeauX]

NAND/SSD is actually quite affordable for what it is these days. Especially relative to the rest of the system component market. Great time to buy copious amounts of RAM and SSD storage. I want enterprise high capacity HDD to come down instead!

Very best,

 

[aleader]

Ha, $10 is $10, and I've spent plenty on other PC parts and presents for a wife and 2 kids. I need to stop the bleeding at some point I still have a VKB joystick in transit that was supposed to be here for Xmas. He doesn't 'need' it yet, I'm just preparing for his birthday on Jan. 12th and wondering if I should wait a bit until the next credit card cutoff! If I can't find a 3600 or 5600x CPU, he won't be able to use it anyways until I do. I was thinking that Micron's new SSD tech may cause current prices to drop a bit more too, but that effect may be a ways off yet.

 

[aleader]

Or we could take up a collection for him, to fund the $10 difference, plus the conversion fee from CAD to USD. And also, don't forget pst, gst, brokerage etc.
Maybe a gofundme account is the best solution?

That's what my Scottish ancestors would have expected!

I'm in. That will be $8.02 USD. That includes 5% GST. No need to include PST as Newegg only charges GST

 

[aleader]

Who knows. I've also read some articles predicting that prices may go lower in Q1 of 2021, but I've also seen SSD pricing has increased over the last few weeks for many drives. All it takes is one major NAND plant to lose power for a few minutes, and pricing could increase instead of go lower.

You can wait and see if the drive you want drops $10 again, or you could buy it and not worry about such a small difference. I've got to buy a new SSD for my son's computer (likely a 1TB Kingston A2000) for $108, which was at $100 before it increased in price. Maybe it falls back to $100 over the next 60 days, or maybe it increases in price a little bit. The key thing it's still a good price and he needs it.

I noticed that I didn't have Kingston in my search filter on Newegg. Is that drive worth $11 more than the WD SN550 drive? I can't really see any difference, or are you just loyal to Kingston? Oddly, the only difference from the listings I can see are that on Newegg.com the warranty is only 3 years, but it's 5 years on Newegg.ca. Is that because it's currently sold by a 3rd party on Newegg.com?

 

[UsandThem]

I noticed that I didn't have Kingston in my search filter on Newegg. Is that drive worth $11 more than the WD SN550 drive? I can't really see any difference, or are you just loyal to Kingston? Oddly, the only difference from the listings I can see are that on Newegg.com the warranty is only 3 years, but it's 5 years on Newegg.ca. Is that because it's currently sold by a 3rd party on Newegg.com?

No loyalty to Kingston.

I just saw the reviews (and then updated reviews when they released new firmware) when it was released. It's similar in price to the SN550, but packs just a little more performance, and has a few extra features (like DRAM) that makes it more attractive to me. It was recently $100 on Amazon, but has creeped up $8, however it is still among the best drives in price/peformance:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-a2000-1-tb-m-2-nvme-ssd/14.html

Honestly, if Adata didn't make a bone-headed decision to quietly change the components with lesser performing ones on the SX8200 PRO (or the hardware identical XPG S11 PRO), I'd would have bought that one at $120. However, that decision caused me to lose my trust in them as a company, so I ruled it out solely for that reason.

 

[Billy Tallis]

Current consensus among analysts seems to be that NAND flash memory prices are going down, and will continue dropping to the tune of 10-15% in Q1 2021. However, retail SSD prices may not drop that much because there's actually a bit of a shortage on SSD controllers and other components. So we might see higher-capacity models come down a bit in price while lower-capacity models stay at the same price or even get a bit more expensive (especially if you're comparing against the best holiday sale prices).

 

[VirtualLarry]

That seems to be true. 128GB-class SATA SSDs seem to be hovering around $19.99 retail, although I did see one last week for $18.99, and 240/256GB-class SATA 2.5" SSDs were floating around $28.99. I think that I've seen them cheaper.

Cheapest 480/512GB-class SATA SSDs this past week @ Newegg were around $44 for a Team Group model. (I bought some a couple of months ago for $39.99.)

2TB SATA seem to be around $179.

 

[aleader]

No loyalty to Kingston.

I just saw the reviews (and then updated reviews when they released new firmware) when it was released. It's similar in price to the SN550, but packs just a little more performance, and has a few extra features (like DRAM) that makes it more attractive to me. It was recently $100 on Amazon, but has creeped up $8, however it is still among the best drives in price/peformance:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-a2000-1-tb-m-2-nvme-ssd/14.html

Honestly, if Adata didn't make a bone-headed decision to quietly change the components with lesser performing ones on the SX8200 PRO (or the hardware identical XPG S11 PRO), I'd would have bought that one at $120. However, that decision caused me to lose my trust in them as a company, so I ruled it out solely for that reason.

Good to know, thanks. I'll keep an eye on that one and see what the price does. I just ordered the SN550 for my son (he's paying for it ). I'll just keep watching prices and if/when they drop a bit more I may fill that other slot...

 

[CakeMonster]

Prices are decent now, I think people should just buy if they need the product. Waiting can be a losing game in this business. I've seen several people delay needed upgrades for products that are not released and in cases not even announced and might not actually be real. There could be another factory flood which could drive prices up for 5+ years like with hard drives.

I'm not saying be wasteful, but do at least consider the value of an improvement now vs gambling on something that is not certain.

 

[MalVeauX]

The other big issue is what class SSD we're talking about. There are dirt cheap SSD, but they are missing a few important features that influence things quite a lot depending on your application.

For example, what's the least expensive good SSD that has DRAM cache?

Very best,

 

[VirtualLarry]

For example, what's the least expensive good SSD that has DRAM cache?

I would argue, the Intel 660p / 665p 1TB NVMe drives. They have a good warranty, I believe that they do have DRAM cache, and are reasonably performant, if not tops on benchmarks. But they are reliable, in my experience, with the 660p drives.

 

[KentState]

Prices will not truly bottom out, instead PLC will offer up lager capacities and then TLC and QLC will be relegated to 1-4TB drives with those prices steadily going down.

 

[VirtualLarry]

PLC??? Penta-level-cell? Are you kidding me

 

[KentState]

PLC??? Penta-level-cell? Are you kidding me

About the only way we are going to get affordable multi-terabyte drives. I personally would be fine with the lower cell life since I would not write often to a large drive.

 

[ultimatebob]

It seems that we've been stuck at the 1 TB = $100 threshold for SSD's for a while now. I was hoping that they would be cost competitive with hard drives by now.

 

[aleader]

It seems that we've been stuck at the 1 TB = $100 threshold for SSD's for a while now. I was hoping that they would be cost competitive with hard drives by now.

I think they are holding their value as most people still see 1TB as 'big enough.' I have 1.5TB total SSD space on my desktop (no HDD) and I don't ever see it as a limitation yet. I probably have 30 games installed, most of which I never play, but I only use my desktop for gaming.

 

[MalVeauX]

Well, there are 4TB~8TB SSD that a consumer can buy. They are just super expensive, not because of production but because of market. They're not in demand by the masses of average joes at the house. There's only a few people with niche uses at the moment that truly need 8TB+ SSD speeds, like video production in 4k, etc. But for just some PC gamer, that's not necessary at all. People that say they need 2TB or more for their game installations alone are not playing those games, they're just keeping them installed.

Very best,

 

[StrangerGuy]

SSDs like rest of PC hardware is soooo boring now, I have so much cash to burn on this hobby yet I still can't justify buying any upgrade, even GPUs since the super GPU-intensive games are also such a snoozefest from a gameplay angle, not mention they are all scalped to oblivion.

The last upgrade that truly mattered was the Gsync 144Hz 27" Acer XB271HU in 2017.

Hell, I can still be using my 6.5 year old M550 1TB instead of NVMe as an OS drive and not notice any real difference.