Why are SSD prices going up?

[El_Capitan]

I've got my theories at least. I've been looking into the Crucial CT128M225 and Corsair P128 for the last year (I have one of each that I bought for $260 and $280 respectively. I do this for everything I buy, even airline tickets. However, I'm dumbfounded as to why SSD prices haven't fluctuated downward in quite a while.

Now, while the prices will be different from each distributor, everyone's prices have been going up since last year.

Prices as of 11/06/2009

Corsair P128
Amazon - $422.99 (Corsair P128)
Buy.com - $422.99 (Corsair P128)
B&H - $399.95 (Corsair P128)
Newegg - $369.00 (Corsair P128)
Provantage - $440.12 (Corsair P128)
Oyen Digital - $364.95 (Corsair P128)

Crucial CT128M225
Amazon - $422.99 (Crucial CT128M225)
Buy.com - $422.99 (Crucial CT128M225)
B&H - $399.95 (Crucial CT128M225)
Newegg - $429.00 (Crucial CT128M225)
Provantage - $440.12 (Crucial CT128M225)
Oyen Digital - $364.95 (Crucial CT128M225)

My main theory is at first, the SSD's have been more successful after more and more people have been buying and using them. Now that the holiday's approaches (most notably Black Friday), prices are going up, so that when the "Sales" go out, the prices go back down to the standard rate. You'll see this strategy on all products, not just SSD's.

 

[ctbaars]

Ever here of the "chicken liver" story?

 

[El_Capitan]

Nope, what's the story, morning glory?

 

[DiscoDuck]

many computer parts go up just in time for the holiday season. Look at ddr2 prices now, almost double in 2 months.

 

[ctbaars]

Less elegant than when told to me; The "chicken liver story" starts out with a women that want to buy chicken liver. She goes out to her local story and sees a sign. Chicken Liver on Sale here! Only 95 cents a pound! She goes in. Sorry, mama, we just ran out ... She walks out, goes to the butcher down the road. He's advertising chicken liver too. But only $1.05 a pound. She thinks, ok, a liitle more but I want chicken liver. The butcher tells her. Oh sorry, we ran out yesterday. We should get some by next week. Frustrated, she goes out, down the road to the supermarket. 85 cents a pound! The deli person tells her, yes but I have to put you on a waiting list and you have to buy a minimum of five pounds. Oh boy. Not what she wanted to hear. She heads for the last store in town. The sign in the window says, "Chicken Livers! $5.40 a pound!" she goes in and starts complaining about the price. The clerk goes, "Yes, I understand, but you see, if I didn't have it in stock, I'd be selling it for 85 cents a pound too."

 

[El_Capitan]

Less elegant than when told to me; The "chicken liver story" starts out with a women that want to buy chicken liver. She goes out to her local story and sees a sign. Chicken Liver on Sale here! Only 95 cents a pound! She goes in. Sorry, mama, we just ran out ... She walks out, goes to the butcher down the road. He's advertising chicken liver too. But only $1.05 a pound. She thinks, ok, a liitle more but I want chicken liver. The butcher tells her. Oh sorry, we ran out yesterday. We should get some by next week. Frustrated, she goes out, down the road to the supermarket. 85 cents a pound! The deli person tells her, yes but I have to put you on a waiting list and you have to buy a minimum of five pounds. Oh boy. Not what she wanted to hear. She heads for the last store in town. The sign in the window says, "Chicken Livers! $5.40 a pound!" she goes in and starts complaining about the price. The clerk goes, "Yes, I understand, but you see, if I didn't have it in stock, I'd be selling it for 85 cents a pound too."

Nice story. So the moral of the story is, if everyone's out of chicken liver, raise the price because you're the only one that has it in stock.

It would apply to the SSD situation if everyone had it out of stock, but finding them in stock hasn't been an issue. The Crucial CT128M225 only has 11 reviews, so the buying rate of that unit isn't very high. That means they shouldn't be out of stock for that unit, as opposed to ones with higher reviews (taking account that even if people buy it, most won't leave a review). However, I remember having a hard time trying to get the ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard one time for $160, but no one had it in stock besides Newegg. I guess they could have raised the price on that board while the reviews were still a perfect 5/5. Now that it's been selling better (30 reviews in 6 months, last 100 in about 2 months), they haven't been out of stock as much, and the prices didn't even fluctuate. Just something to think about.

 

[sub mesa]

SSDs consist of NAND flash memory; used not only in SSDs but also "multimedia" flash memory for digital camera's and USB sticks. The demand for such memory is growing rapidly, while production capacity is limited. This means high demand and limited supply; meaning NAND prices remain high.

Prices of SSDs seem to be stable though; Intel SSDs remain on the same price level, at least in my local area (eurozone).

 

[El_Capitan]

SSDs consist of NAND flash memory; used not only in SSDs but also "multimedia" flash memory for digital camera's and USB sticks. The demand for such memory is growing rapidly, while production capacity is limited. This means high demand and limited supply; meaning NAND prices remain high.

Prices of SSDs seem to be stable though; Intel SSDs remain on the same price level, at least in my local area (eurozone).

NAND has been around for almost 5 years, I doubt production capacity is limited if Moore's Law applies to the scaling factor that we'll reach 20nm around 2010 (which is probably going to be the case). That means production for 34nm should have been in production in 2008 (which also has been the case). I just think they scaled back production, not that there's any more demand out there for SSD's.

 

[sub mesa]

As said; SSDs are just afraction of international demand. Most is for multimedia memory in digital cameras and that market grew out of proportions really. Flash memory is everywhere; its booming. Until that changes and the demand vs supply ratio stabilises, the prices of NAND won't drop significantly. Its also not possible to build a high-tech next-gen NAND flash production facility in a couple of months; this takes a lot of planning, investments and time before production is increased. Moores law is not fast enough to accomodate this emerging market.

 

[El_Capitan]

As said; SSDs are just afraction of international demand. Most is for multimedia memory in digital cameras and that market grew out of proportions really. Flash memory is everywhere; its booming. Until that changes and the demand vs supply ratio stabilises, the prices of NAND won't drop significantly. Its also not possible to build a high-tech next-gen NAND flash production facility in a couple of months; this takes a lot of planning, investments and time before production is increased. Moores law is not fast enough to accomodate this emerging market.

Makes sense. I'd have to do some more research if I really cared, but I really don't.

Generally, the easiest thing from a business perspective is knowing the production costs. I figure they'd be smart enough to forecast the demand, but maybe I give too much credit.

 

[sub mesa]

You are forgetting they are concerned most with their return-on-investments, meaning: they have production facilities which start generating profit only after a certain time, the longer that production facility is competitive the more money they make. Initially they have to invest alot of money and it takes time before this investment starts turning into a profit.

If the prices to sell their products stay high, this return-on-investment will be higher and the break-even-point where the investments equal the revenues will be quicker. The longer they can stay in business after this BEP period; the more money their production facilities generate.

So its in their own interests to keep prices high and make sure there is no over-capacity or (global) over-production as this would lower prices. Right now people are making some good money of NAND, and in the future they would have to sell NAND for under cost-price; like happened to the DRAM market several times in the past.

For some research, i suggest DRAMExchange they usually have nice insights and graphs. Don't take everything for granted though.

 

[buwish]

I'm thinking that demand isn't that high for SSD's due to the ever falling prices of mechanical HDD's, especially those with higher storage capacities. Enthusiast or not, people are looking for the best deal when it comes down to it most of the time, hence why SSD's aren't catching on as many had figured they would. Plus, there are storage limitation with SSD's yet. Very few are going to blow a grand or two on a 512GB SSD when they can spend $150 or so on a 2TB drive.

 

[El_Capitan]

I'm thinking that demand isn't that high for SSD's due to the ever falling prices of mechanical HDD's, especially those with higher storage capacities. Enthusiast or not, people are looking for the best deal when it comes down to it most of the time, hence why SSD's aren't catching on as many had figured they would. Plus, there are storage limitation with SSD's yet. Very few are going to blow a grand or two on a 512GB SSD when they can spend $150 or so on a 2TB drive.

I'm just wondering that myself. I bought my SSD's due to it being good deals at the time. As much as I'm enthusiastic about them, the price is just ridiculous had I wanted to buy some more. $80 on a 1TB drive is a great deal. Heck, I'm re-using a 200GB 7200 RPM 2.5" Hard Drive I used to use on my laptop as my back-up/storage drive. The builds I've been using with AMD's Phenom II's x3 720 BE's and 7200 RPM drives are hardly slow. Compared to my i7 920 and SSD, yes it's slower, but I don't lose any sleep over it. Plus, the cost of an SSD is the cost of one of my AMD builds, lol. Ridiculous.

 

[sminlal]

I'm thinking that demand isn't that high for SSD's due to the ever falling prices of mechanical HDD's, especially those with higher storage capacities.

IMHO, the price of hard drives has very little impact on SSD prices. SSDs have never been competitive with hard drives in terms of cost per gigabyte. People looking for cheap storage don't look for SSDs, period.

The market for SSDs is driven by people seeking good performance. The reason SSDs can command a higher price is because they have such vastly better performance than hard drives.

 

[El_Capitan]

IMHO, the price of hard drives has very little impact on SSD prices. SSDs have never been competitive with hard drives in terms of cost per gigabyte. People looking for cheap storage don't look for SSDs, period.

The market for SSDs is driven by people seeking good performance. The reason SSDs can command a higher price is because they have such vastly better performance than hard drives.

I'd have to disagree a little. The SSD's compete in the desktop market against HDD's at the performance level (think Western Digital's Velociraptor's and SCSI drives). The major market for SSD are also the notebook power users. Low heat, no noise, low power consumption, fast speed... it clearly distinguishes itself as the best out there in that market (particularly the Corsair P128 with it's lowest power consumption among SSD's).

Now, I'd agree, that as far as storage goes, HDD's leads the competition. I doubt they'll be phased out for a couple of years. SSD's are limited in storage right now, and I'm sure they'll get to 500GB in 2 years, but reliability is the main focus for end users. At least 5 years for data to be held on a hard drive should be the goal (10 years should be max... whoever stores important stuff on a drive for 10 years is crazy).

 

[sminlal]

I'd have to disagree a little. The SSD's compete in the desktop market against HDD's at the performance level (think Western Digital's Velociraptor's and SCSI drives). The major market for SSD are also the notebook power users.

On a performance scale of one to 10, if a regular HDD is a "1" and an SDD is a "10", then a Velociraptor would be around a "2". Yes, people buy Velociraptors for performance, but SSDs are still so far ahead of them (for random I/O performance, which is what really counts for most people) that it really isn't a contest.

Excellent point about notebooks, though - low power consumption and ruggedness are strong reasons why SSDs are attractive in that market.

 

[sub mesa]

I would say the 7200rpm / 10.000rpm / 15.000 rpm HDDs will die out the most quickly; they were targeted towards performance but as they have been superseeded in that by many thousands of degrees, which is simply ashtonishing, there is no market for these drives as soon as SSDs mature and prices stabilize.

Especially the 10k / 15k disks also had limited capacity and focusses on performance instead. They are becoming quickly obsolete. The HDDs that will still be useful will be green 5400rpm drives that store a lot of data, are still fast with sequential transfers, have excellent price-per-gigabyte ratios and don't have excessive power usage and heat generation. 3,5" drives may also disappear gruadually and 2,5" taking over. Keep in mind HDDs used to be 5,25" in the past (anyone remember Quantum Bigfoot? )

 

[sminlal]

I would say the 7200rpm / 10.000rpm / 15.000 rpm HDDs will die out the most quickly

Yeah, I'm actually a bit puzzled that people are still buying Velociraptors. If you want speed, you're so much better off getting a smaller SSD for about the same price and then moving the stuff that isn't used that often over to a different disk in order to deal with it's smaller capacity.

Keep in mind HDDs used to be 5,25" in the past

The first hard drives I worked with were the size of washing machines and used platters 15" in diameter...

 

[OvrClkr]

many computer parts go up just in time for the holiday season. Look at ddr2 prices now, almost double in 2 months.

The pricing of DDR2 has nothing to do with the holiday season... DDR2 is more expensive now that DDR3 is going mainstream. This happens everytime new modules come out. When DDR4 hits the market DDR3 will be dirt cheap and so forth, its like a cycle. Not all SSD's are going up n price, Intel's drive's are considerably lower than they were when they first came out. Only a few drives have gone up in price, and that is a recipe for disaster specially now that most will not even look at SSD's when they can get a regular platter drive with 10x the space for a fraction of the cost.

 

[El_Capitan]

I like everyone's speculations. I'll edit my original post on Black Friday and see if the prices drop, and by how much.

 

[notty22]

Today is NOV 9, Kingston announced their campaign of their new V series ssd, with the Intel controller 40gig boot drive for 85.00 !
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/kingston-intel-ssd-solid-state,8932.html

I was waiting at midnight at newegg but this has not appeared yet. Amazon has a external link mentioning the product , but thats it.
Thats mainstream price for high performance not seen YET !
WHERE IS IT ?

 

[El_Capitan]

Today is NOV 9, Kingston announced their campaign of their new V series ssd, with the Intel controller 40gig boot drive for 85.00 !
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/kingston-intel-ssd-solid-state,8932.html

I was waiting at midnight at newegg but this has not appeared yet. Amazon has a external link mentioning the product , but thats it.
Thats mainstream price for high performance not seen YET !
WHERE IS IT ?

Lol, it's at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139081

Price is $124.99 before the rebate, $104.99 after the mail-in rebate.

170 MB/sec Read
40 MB/sec Write

You get twice as fast write speeds on a Caviar Black, and with 1TB hard drive space for $109.99 with 80MB/sec Read. Not worth it.

Here's a nice review:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2871/kingston_ssdnow_v_series_64gb_ssd_upgrade_kit/index.html

 

[notty22]

That link at tweaktown is a different animal COMPLETELY.
This drive has a slightly crippled version of the Intel controller and trails the much coveted intel at write speed. But in other categories almost rivals it.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=4
Here is a review on the acutal drive. It has the performance that will let windows 7 boot 4 times faster , but installing it will not be as fast as the intel for example.

 

[El_Capitan]

Once thing I dislike about AnandTech is while they have good tests, they don't account for all the problems associated with these SSD's. Intel's controller have stuttering issues, but allows firmware - though with bugs. Samsung's controller doesn't allow firmware, but the reliability on them are spot on.

I still think the new Kingston V series SSD is a bad purchase. You're not going to be installing much on it (Windows 7 OS, Office, one version of SQL Server and one version of Visual Studio). Then, all you have for performance is I/O much like the Intel x25-m. Yeah, for web servers it'd be useful, if it doesn't die in a few days to a few weeks, but for a desktop or even a workstation user, it's not going to have a big impact.

 

[notty22]

Well the theory behind upgrades and seat of the pants feel of your box make 140 dollar ssd on the performance level this has a great idea. 5 years ago, WD came out with the first 10,000 rpm HD's for the enthusisast for just this purpose. I paid almost 300 dollars for my 37 gig WD . Back then I got maybe 20% more performance than other drives. Now that drive has slower numbers than the maistream Seagates I have in the same computer. (except for access times/ 9.0 vs 15). Its funny how history is sort of repeating itself, except now the access times are less than 1ms and other factors are also faster and the pricepoint. 40 gigs for 140. Fans of ssd's claim its their single most impressive upgrade they have done on their computer. I'm going to take the plunge when they come in stock !