SSD Prices Have Fallen 15 to 30 Percent Since January

News
By
Published

Declining Flash memory prices have lead to great savings.

SSD Prices Falling
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The price of SSDs is in rapid decline. Anyone who has been following the market for the last few months should not be surprised. We've long known that a glut of NAND flash memory and lowering manufacturing costs are now being passed along to the consumer, with typical reductions of 15 to 30 percent in just the last 60 days.

Back in October, analysts predicted that, by mid-2023, the price of drives would drop by 50 percent. At the time, major suppliers such as Kioxia and Micron announced that they would reduce the production of NAND to keep supplies lower. However, there's only so much that a memory manufacturer can do to limit output before they are losing money by maintaining idle production facilities.  

Latest Videos FromTom's Hardware
Avram Piltch
Avram Piltch
Managing Editor: Special Projects

Avram Piltch is Managing Editor: Special Projects. When he's not playing with the latest gadgets at work or putting on VR helmets at trade shows, you'll find him rooting his phone, taking apart his PC, or coding plugins. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram developed many real-world benchmarks, including our laptop battery test.

13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • That sure is a great s on ssd
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    I want cheap cheap crucial mx 500 sata ssd. Have Ten slot's to put a good use. Cold storage :)
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Get them now before they skyrocket. Samsung is losing billions on memory this year so they're cutting back, other manufacturers are doing the same.

    https://wccftech.com/ssd-memory-manufacturers-to-lower-production-focus-on-price-increases-as-demand-slumps/
    Reply
  • TechieTwo
    With a worldwide economic recession a lot of prices will drop and jobs will be lost.
    Reply
  • randomizer
    Still Jan prices downunder, unfortunately.
    Reply
  • Alvar Miles Udell said:
    Get them now before they skyrocket. Samsung is losing billions on memory this year so they're cutting back, other manufacturers are doing the same.

    https://wccftech.com/ssd-memory-manufacturers-to-lower-production-focus-on-price-increases-as-demand-slumps/
    There’s no need for high pressure sales tactics. Should the economic downturn continue they still won’t be able to demand the price they were asking. Even if they cut supply because most people have what they need already.
    Reply
  • PEnns
    Let them drop, it's still not enough for me.

    The sweet spot that defines cheaper SSDs for me is when a 2 TB SSD costs no more than $100.
    Reply
  • Lafong
    PEnns said:
    Let them drop, it's still not enough for me.

    The sweet spot that defines cheaper SSDs for me is when a 2 TB SSD costs no more than $100.


    https://www.newegg.com/intel-2tb-670p-series/p/20-167-473
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Amdlova said:
    I want cheap cheap crucial mx 500 sata ssd. Have Ten slot's to put a good use. Cold storage :)
    Depends on how cold. If you go a couple years without plugging them in or turning them on, you run a serious risk of data loss.

    SSDs are not designed to be a cold storage medium. HDDs are better for that, but tape and optical are best.

    abufrejoval said:
    Consumer SSDs need to retain data for five years, when powered off,
    Absolutely not. You're spreading some really bad information, here.

    First, almost no consumer SSDs even come with a 5-year warranty.

    Second, show me even a single datasheet or manufacturer website which says they do this! I haven't seen a spec for power-off data retention on a consumer SSD for nearly 10 years - and I've been looking!
    I've personally seen a 2018-era TLC drive, from a top-tier brand, have bad blocks when I powered up a machine that had been sitting in storage for about 2 years.

    abufrejoval said:
    I believe it's much shorter than that for data center drives,
    The difference is that some data center drives actually have a specification for power-off or EoL data retention. The standard spec seems to be 90 days. In practice, you'll probably get much more than that, but the manufacturer just wants you to know that they only guarantee that much.

    abufrejoval said:
    but that I don't know if they are tested against that after they have reached single digits on remaining life expectancy and temperatures >60°C, both of which can be rather detrimental to proper data retention.
    The spec is the spec. If they don't make any such qualifications, then as long as it's still under warranty and you haven't exceeded any of the other limits, it should still retain data according to what they've stated.

    abufrejoval said:
    I've not yet lost any data to any older SSD lying around for years.
    "Older" is the key. That means larger cells which can hold more charge. Also, helps that they're lower-density with only 1 or 2 bits per cell.

    abufrejoval said:
    RAID5/6 are too much of an SSD killer because of the write amplification, another reason why I stick with conventional HDDs there.
    Only if you're doing zillions of little sub-megabyte writes. RAID-related write amplification is nothing compared with what SSDs themselves do.

    For wearing out SSDs, modern web browsers are probably the worst offenders. According to Windows, the amount of host writes they generate can be really insane.

    But, the key point about RAID-related write amplification is that you never have more writes-per-drive than you would if you just used a single one of those drives standalone. So, as long as you're not pushing the single-drive write limit, then there's nothing to worry about with putting it in a RAID-5 or RAID-6.

    abufrejoval said:
    Too bad all those SATA ports are disappearing from mainboards
    All? I haven't see a board that doesn't have at least 2, but most boards still seem to go with 4 or more.
    Reply