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I purchased 2TB ssd for a home nas. I watched prices for 18 months. They didn't move an inch. Prices for HDD do drop when the TB available rises but there seem

• wmf 1y ago
  The floor for hard disks is the cost of the case, motor, controller board, etc. The floor for SSDs is the controller and the PCB.
  • dopa42365 1y ago
    Price/TB is nearly identical for ancient SATA and new "high-end" PCIe 4 M.2 SSDs. The cost is EVERYTHING except the controller and the PCB. Which would be the memory, shockingly.
    • ggm 1y ago
      Do you think they have a yield problem? The price on chips usually drops when the production tech matures. I could believe the fab lines are running smoking hot, but surely by now lower density fab in all kinds of economies could be making this tech.
      • esseph 1y ago
        Maybe spending time making more GPU memory instead?
        • wtallis 1y ago
          DRAM and NAND require entirely different fabs.
  • ggm 1y ago
    We're nowhere near floor cost in SSD because the cost of the PCB and controller is cents. We're not even tracking the chipcost for the storage. There's no linear function between them in terms of numbers, or die space. The price is just "the price"
    • DevelopingElk 1y ago
      Not true. High end controllers need DRAM for caching indexes. That's at least a few dollars. Flash storage is a commodity, we are paying close to the amortized cost of manufactured and sales.
      • ggm 1y ago
        Mate, if you think we're paying amortised costs you either work in American pharma or marketing. We're paying fat shareholder returns. "A few dollars" forsooth. My 2TB SSD cost $150 AUD and was (I believe) immensely profitable to everyone down the supply chain. The same spend gets you 16GB of packaged DDR ram and I think we can both see there is no linear relationship between the DDR chip cost, in GB and the 100x denser storage needed for SLC flash. This is not about vlsi density or number of chips. I'm not paying $15,000 more for my SSD. "The prices are the prices"
        • fh973 1y ago
          An SSD with 2TB flash typically contains 2GB RAM for lookup tables.
      • AtlasBarfed 1y ago
        We are talking about Samsung and Micron here?
  • HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
    The cost of manufacturing a 276 layer (!!!) NAND chip must also be significant, and a I dare say takes longer than the mechanical components given that we're talking 276 sequential steps of applying photo resist, UV exposure, then etching ...
    • wtallis 1y ago
      The whole reason why 3D NAND happened and higher layer counts enable cheaper, higher density storage is that it doesn't require an etch step per layer to build the memory cells. It's just deposit several dozen layers then etch holes down through all of those layers in one step, followed by filling in those holes with different materials. (Though at 276 layers, it's a stack of more than one deck of layers built as separate batches. The aspect ratio of the holes is the limiting factor.) But aside from that, the cost of the NAND is the variable portion of the drive's cost, not part of the fixed floor of cost necessary for a drive of any capacity.
      • HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
        Interesting - thanks. I wasn't aware 3D NAND was built multiple layers at a time in this way. How are the layers made different, without individual masking and etch?
        • wtallis 1y ago
          The layers largely aren't different. The end result is a vertical string of (theoretically identical) NAND memory cells filling the holes that were etched through the stack, with contacts at the top and bottom. At the edge of the stack, at the end of the fabrication process, they etch a staircase to expose one contact with each layer. See https://thememoryguy.com/3d-nand-how-do-you-access-the-control-gates/ https://thememoryguy.com/3d-nand-how-do-you-access-the-contr...
• Dylan16807 1y ago
  SSD prices cratered in 2023, then shot way back up, and have barely dropped since then. Baseline name brand SSDs got down to about $75 for 2TB, and I'm not going to be impressed by anything until I see similar numbers again.
  • porphyra 1y ago
    I got an Intel 660P 2TB for $55 haha. Should have stocked up on bigger SSDs ugh.
• adastra22 1y ago
  Also the capacities for SSDs have barely budged. Many years ago I went all-out and equipped my PC with a 4TB SSD. Just last week I went SSD shopping for the first time in ages.. and 4TB was the largest drive anyone had. It's a few generations later and the new NVME/PCIe standards mean faster, lower-latency drives. But where are the 8TB, 12TB, or 24TB drives?
  • Dylan16807 1y ago
    There's a couple 8TB options, but with the twin constraints of M.2 size and price nobody is really bothering to go bigger for consumer parts. And the technologies for fast connections to 2.5" drives keep failing to get a foothold in consumer products.
    • crote 1y ago
      > And the technologies for fast connections to 2.5" drives keep failing to get a foothold in consumer products. Not surprising, considering the vast majority of consumers don't need more storage than you can easily fit in an M.2 form factor. Why mess around with expensive enterprise U.2 drives when it gives you zero benefit and gains you the hassle of dealing with extra wires and finding space for an ugly bulky rectangle? Once you get to storage sizes where 2.5" becomes a need, you are well beyond the consumer price range. Very few people are willing to spend more on a single SSD than on the rest of their gaming computer combined.
      • mort96 1y ago
        With individual games being hundreds of gigabytes and growing, I'm not convinced that you're right.
        • Tadpole9181 1y ago
          The "vast majority of consumers" are not PC gamers who keep a dozen AAA games installed at a time. They have work PCs and laptops.
• abdullahkhalids 1y ago
  Why do you think the price of SSDs should be close to cost? As there are many consumer level producers (who all buy from a smaller set of actual producers), it may seem like the market is close to perfect competition (which would justify price=cost). But actually there are many low quality producers that frequently burn those stupid enough to buy from them. And a few high quality producers who generally sell what they advertise. So if you are trying to buy a high quality SSD, you are buying from an oligopoly that have built their brands over the years. So they can charge significantly higher than cost due to this reason. And I imagine that others can't drop their prices much lower than this price because then people get suspicious and don't buy it at all.
  • ggm 1y ago
    > Why do you think the price of SSDs should be close to cost? Not close, but closeER and at least some evidence of tracking. That's what I'd expect if they were ubiquitous. Some goods track commodity prices closely. Shrinkflation happens when you can't easily alter the unit price, chocolate bars are a good example. Not that we pay anything like as little as the producers get: there's enough competition that putting valhrona to one side, chocolate prices reflect commodity prices. Same with fuel. Same with ROHC compliant resistors. SMD components. PCBs. Batteries, led light bulbs. DDR memory. Not SSD. There is no reason it must, this isn't the laws of physics. I just observe it doesn't. If there was more visible competition in supply of inputs, they MIGHT. But it looks like at best a duopoly or tri-opoly of inputs, and prices reflect demand a lot more. Supply isn't even close to demand, there's no surplus. Those other things are somewhat peripheral. Not saying they don't have a role, but I don't think it's fundamental. I bought 6 "patriot" P210 and they get average to poor reviews for speed and reliability.
    • lazide 1y ago
      Eh, probably RAM’esque price fixing. Not that anyone is going to look too closely with all the geopolitical fuckery right now.
      • mananaysiempre 1y ago
• kijin 1y ago
  There is no consumer market for 4TB+ SSDs. There never was, and there probably won't be for the foreseeable future. Most non-technical people have been conditioned to store their data on their phones and/or in the cloud these days. When they need more storage, their first thought is to upgrade their cloud plan, not to open up their device and void the warranty. Professionals like us know of course that the SSD is an easily upgradable component. But we also tend to know how to set up a NAS with 4x 18TB HDDs in a zfs pool that can saturate the bandwidth of any reasonable home network when transferring large files. So the market for professionals and enthusiasts don't always translate into a market for large SSDs.
  • dontlaugh 1y ago
    I would like to be able to get rid of my hard drive NAS at some point, in favour of something smaller and quieter. The price really doesn’t make sense right now, though.
  • rbanffy 1y ago
    > and there probably won't be for the foreseeable future. There might be if we get to vert large models that rely more on storage than compute, but that's a lot of "ifs" in there. Maybe when people start capturing their birthdays in 16K HDR at 120 fps.
  • asnyder 1y ago
    Opening up one's device does not void the warranty in the US. We have the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act which forbids this, despite manufactures trying to groom us otherwise with those void if removed or broken stickers. Most recently, FTC started to raise awareness and crack down on some abuse: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/ftc-warns-companies-stop-warranty-practices-harm-consumers-right-repair https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/.... Will take a long time to de-program and by that time nothing will be replaceable to matter due to industries march towards preventing repair altogether.
  • mschuster91 1y ago
    > There is no consumer market for 4TB+ SSDs. There never was, and there probably won't be for the foreseeable future. Gamers certainly are a market. Borderlands 3 for example, a 2019 game, clocks in at 75GB on Steam, GTA 5 at 105 GB, MSFS 150 GB. And that's all OLD games. CoD Black Ops wants 175 GB, GTA 6 is rumored to want anything from 100 to 300 GB. You don't want that on spinning rust.
• ksec 1y ago
  HDD isn't any different. Peice per TB has been flat for many years. You get higher capacity for Hyperscaler, but those are not intended for consumers and you need to pre book in advance to get them. SSD price may have fluctuating for the last few years but their cost model are now similar to HDD. And so is DRAM. Mainly cost to produce GB of DRAM / NAND / HDD are roughly the same for many years. You may get better performance or lower energy usage. But cost hast changed. And all fluctuations in market are supple and demand dynamics, which is why many saw 4TB for $150 in 2023 and thought things will drop soon. But that has not been the case. We need breakthroughs to further reduce the cost per GB. Although one could argue we have half the cost already if we accounted for inflation for the past 20 years.
  • AtlasBarfed 1y ago
    The SSDs come from, very generally speaking, the same semiconductor segment that has been busted multiple times for price fixing in DRAM. Not that hyperconsolidation in HDDs isn't vulnerable to the same things, but the management playbook of these guys is to fix and inflate as much as possible.
  • Jerry2 1y ago
    What's a fair price for a TB of HDD? SSD? Which high-capacity SSDs are worth buying? I'm not sure if there are any sites tracking this. Anyway, I need to buy 30TB of storage this year so I can upgrade my NAS and make it last few years. Thanks for any replies from anyone who has an opinion!
    • wmf 1y ago
      HDD: $10/TB SSD: $50-100/TB
      • nixgeek 1y ago
        Most new drives are sold into consumer/end user retail around $20/TB and only seem to dip a little during sales (with most sellers also quantity limiting any sales, also). Getting to $10/TB is possible but typically involves buying manufacturer recertified, and may involve going smaller (14-16TB drives) than you might prefer. I managed to find 64x Seagate Exos 20TB for $13/TB new about 2 years ago, on NewEgg of all places, but I’ve never seen that deal repeat. :( All the new 30TB+ HDDs using HAMR technology from Seagate and WD still feel like expensive unobtainium.
• deleted 1y ago
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• toast0 1y ago
  > Prices for HDD do drop when the TB available rises but there seems to be a "floor" price. For SSD, there definitely appears to be a floor price. The floor price for new hard drives is somewhere around $50-$80. When a drive at a certain capacity is only sellable for $50, most of the options disappear. Looking at newegg, you can get a 1TB drive for $60, 2TB for $65, and 4TB for $75 ... The price floor is around there. But if you want the best $/TB, you've got to get larger drives. For SSDs, the floor is a lot lower. You can get a 128gb ssd for $22, 256Gb for $25, 512GB for $33, 1TB for $50, and then after that $/TB stays pretty consistent, there's not a lot of reduction in cost due to density like with hard drives.
• torginus 1y ago
  Imo the problem of SSDs is that even super-cheap products easily hit or exceed the sweet spot (which for me is at least 1TB of capacity and 1-2GB/s of read write speed, and lack of judder/slowdown when near capacity). A ton of affordable SSDs can do this, and after that (well, I'd pay for 2TB but not more), any upgrade is not noticeable for the end user.
• sleepyguy 1y ago
  There is collusion between manufacturers to control prices. Just like other industries, they learned the hard way with overproduction and capacity. Samsung was able to convince everyone to cut back. In Dec of 23, I purchased a Crucial P5 Plus Gen 4 2 TB SSD for $86 off Amazon and it was soon afterwards Samsung cut back drastically, with competitors following.
• fennecfoxy 1y ago
  Your last point is exactly what capitalism has wrought, can see it in everything now. It relies on the apathy of the general public, which is immense. Every now & then there's an article on shrinkflation, and it's incredibly noticeable to all of us that what we're buying in the supermarkets we're getting less for more. Do we do anything about it? Nah. A lot of it is down to endless growth, investors hopping on the last few carriages of the train and demanding that more carriages be added after them, and everyone else already on-board obviously support that as well. There are very few companies that are run as "at capacity" ie fully satisfying their market size, competing with competitors, organically staying the same size due to external factors. Now it's all internal factors (which I include investors in) trying to balloon every company as large as they can.