Friday, June 22nd 2012

SSD Prices in Free-Fall: The Next DRAM?

Hard drive prices refuse to budge after last year's floods that struck manufacturing facilities in Thailand, even as manufacturers turn record profit. The solid-state drive market, on the other hand, is finally rolling with competition, high volume production, and advancements in NAND flash technologies. With memory majors such as Hynix adding new NAND flash manufacturing facilities to their infrastructure, SSD is expected to finally get its big break in the mainstream market.

SSD prices, according to price aggregators, are on a free-fall. Models which once held relative pricing as high as $2 per gigabyte, and going deep within the $1 mark. For example, Crucial's widely-praised M4 256 GB SSD has a price per GB of 'just' $0.82, and a market price around $200, something unheard of, for a 256 GB SSD with transfer rates of over 500 MB/s. With SSD major OCZ Technology releasing new generations of drives under the Vertex 4 and Agility 4 series that use Indilinx processors, older Vertex 3 and Agility 3 models are being phased out, some of these are seeing sub $1/GB prices. Intel is also responding to market trends, with prices of its SSD 520 series dropping sharply. Find a boat-load of stats at the source.
Source: The TechReport
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120 Comments on SSD Prices in Free-Fall: The Next DRAM?

#101
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
AhhzzNo doubt, I'm running a 2Tb hard drive, and downgrading to that small a drive is not really appetizing....
DanTheBanjomanYou have 2TB of data that needs to be accessible that fast? It's not SSD or HD, you can have both.
what dan said, i run about 18TB of drives total (with only about 12TB of data atm), and a 120GB SSD did me just fine.


the attitude of fitting absolutely everything on one hard drive is scary to me, data loss would cost you everything.
Posted on Reply
#102
Prima.Vera
Damn son, wtf are you storing for 12TB?!??!??
Posted on Reply
#103
m1ch
Prima.VeraDamn son, wtf are you storing for 12TB?!??!??
My vote goes for HD pron ;)
Posted on Reply
#104
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
Prima.VeraDamn son, wtf are you storing for 12TB?!??!??
if 2TB is good... ONE PER SATA PORT.




(and THEN get the port multipliers out on E-sata!)

(and thats not even all of them, got a few i just havent connected in a while)
Posted on Reply
#105
TRWOV
<off-topic>

And here I was thinking that 4 HDDs were a little too much (5TB total). What's all that for? BD rips? I have an extra 2.5" 320GB where I backup the important (work) stuff. Everything else I have backed up on DVDs or I have the original media.

</off-topic>
Posted on Reply
#107
AsRock
TPU addict
nvidiaintelftwIf you have a gaming rig, SSDs don't do anything for you in terms for FPS performance. Only load times, and right now games on a normal mechanical drive load fast enough. You must be like 10 years old if you cannot wait 10 seconds for a game to load. I only have an SSD to Windows and all my games and everything else is on a mechanical.



Why would Samsung be on that list. They are some of the most reliable drives right now. Intel, Crucial, and Samsung if you want reliability is the way to go.
Their is the odd game were it can help.. One is Arma 2 when the spawning happens on the massive custom missions were it would give you much smoother game play and are even better when running a dedicated server.

So you are right about the FPS but depending on game smoother gameplay if the game engine has to load while playing.
Posted on Reply
#108
Prima.Vera
@Mussels

Still no answer on what are you storing on those...
Posted on Reply
#109
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
Prima.Vera@Mussels

Still no answer on what are you storing on those...
everything. i'm entitled to legal backups of TV shows (TV tuner card), movies that i own, and subtitled anime that isnt available in my region. i also have a technet account, so i've got ISO's for every version of windows, with each level of service pack. even linux iso's.

i also have backups for people i know as well - i fix their laptop, i backup their stuff. cause i know they'll break it again in a week anyway -.-
Posted on Reply
#110
CounterZeus
I jumped on the SSD wagon as well now, ordered a Samsung 830 128GB :)
Posted on Reply
#111
w3b
Musselsif 2TB is good... ONE PER SATA PORT.
Love the Samsungs there (Seagate had to buy them out :banghead: ); at that rate you'll be looking at building a NAS in no time :toast:

As for SSDs; none here either due to price and reliability (too much of a 'customer = paying beta tester' vibe going on atm for my liking :ohwell: ) and lack of suitability for my requirements.
Posted on Reply
#112
Irony
I got a little baby 60gb OCZ agility for $45, good for OS. Gotta love 14 second bootups.
Posted on Reply
#114
Phusius
You can get a 128Gb Crucial m4 SSD off Buy.com for 34.95. That is what I did last week, it's $5 off for new customers so 89.95 to 84.95, and then $50 more off when you sign up for a no annual fee Visa. Which I did. Canceled the credit card after I paid the 34.95, xD
Posted on Reply
#115
alucasa
SSD has been the greatest and cheapest upgrades for me.

I wasn't one of those early adapters but close. When I tried out a cheap (for that time) 32gb SSD on an old laptop that used to run like 18 year old bitter dog, it suddenly came to life running like 3 months old kitten.

Since then, after some researching, I purchased mostly Intel SSDs. It's been some years now and none of them has failed on me so far.

Me not going back.

Games don't matter to me as I don't think I really have time to play games anyway. Well, I do play Football Manager 2012 and have like 2000 hours in it according to Steam.
Posted on Reply
#116
Completely Bonkers
Prices are falling like old tea-cakes.

Just bought 2x 240GB Vertex 3 MAX IOPS. EUR 124 each. geizhals.at/de/?phist=630770&age=183

Laptop was struggling with iTunes BLOAT. And slowing to a crawl with just 3GB left on the OS partition. So bought a 240GB for less than the 120GB is replaces. 120GB goes into workstation as OS drive... with HDD for data.
Posted on Reply
#117
Frick
Fishfaced Nincompoop
Completely BonkersPrices are falling like old tea-cakes.

Just bought 2x 240GB Vertex 3 MAX IOPS. EUR 124 each. geizhals.at/de/?phist=630770&age=183

Laptop was struggling with iTunes BLOAT. And slowing to a crawl with just 3GB left on the OS partition. So bought a 240GB for less than the 120GB is replaces. 120GB goes into workstation as OS drive... with HDD for data.
Holy crap that's a good price! They're a bit more here, and still I can't afford one! Rawr!
Posted on Reply
#118
Irony
That is an awesome price. My friend managed to stack some coupons on top of a good deal on newegg a couple months ago, got that same drive for the same price, $160 dollars. I'm waiting for a really good deal on a 512 vertex 4 or something like that though.
Posted on Reply
#119
m1dg3t
I lucked out and got an Adata 256Gb for $165! If it works I'll be looking for another one in the future! Especially @ that price :) I don't need more than 500Gb on this current "build" :o

HDD MFGs, ESPECIALLY WesternDigital, will never see a $ from my wallet again. You wanna ROB people? Ok. No problemo! You never see my currency AGAIN! Same goes for Asus. Goddamned thieves. :nutkick:
Posted on Reply
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