SSD price slump shows no end in sight

[Daniel Sims]

In brief: Solid-state drive prices have been dropping due to NAND oversupply for months. The trend looks particularly severe moving towards the end of 2022, and the latest reports indicate it won't let up. This year's holiday season may be an excellent time to upgrade if you're looking for a PCIe 4.0 SSD.

A new report from analysts at TrendForce suggests NAND flash prices will drop by 15-20 percent in Q4 2022, likely dragging down SSD prices. Prices could bottom out around the end of this year, but the picture going into 2023 is unclear.

Solid-state storage is only one computer component facing price pressure in this year's post-pandemic economy. Manufacturers struggled to keep up with increased demand in 2020 and 2021, and those efforts led to oversupply in 2022. Graphics cards, PCs, and other devices have seen demand fall recently due to economic uncertainty, causing vendors to slash prices to clear inventory.

Despite the weak market, companies like SK Hynix and Kioxia are bringing new products to the sector, increasing price competition. Price pressure due to increased shipments in the face of falling demand is already hitting 176-layer NAND and PCIe 4.0 SSDs, particularly 512GB drives. A similar trend faces enterprise SSDs.

Other devices like TVs, Chromebooks, and smartphones have also seen their sales fall recently, putting pressure on the eMMC and UFS markets. Analysts project both storage types to see prices drop by 13-18 percent in Q4.

The need for most storage types is so exhausted that 3D NAND prices dipped by 30 to 35 percent in Q3. Projections for Q4 are rather bleak as well, with analysts predicting another 20- to 25-percent drop. This trend threatens to put most NAND manufacturers into the red as they begin selling wafers at a loss.

The analysis only extends to the end of 2022, but it isn't clear whether prices will start to recover in early 2023. Fears of a recession early next year are making market forecasts pessimistic.

Graphics cards and SSD prices have been falling for a while, and new generations of CPUs and GPUs are coming from all major vendors this fall. However, it may be prudent to see how the GPU price war plays out between Nvidia's new Ada Lovelace line and AMD's upcoming RDNA3 over the next several months. If you're angling to upgrade or build a PC soon, late 2022 might be a great time to buy if prices don't slip further afterward.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96122-ssd-price-slump-shows-no-end-sight.html

 

[mrtraver]

TBH I am not seeing this yet at the consumer level. Of three SSDs I added to a Newegg wishlist in June, one is the same price, one has dropped about 6%, and one has increased. A search of comparable drives today shows similar prices. Since I don't NEED a new SSD yet; I guess I will continue to wait.

 

[punctualturn]

If the article is true, I would love to replace my 4 8tb drives in my nas with cheap ssds.

 

[noel24]

TBH I am not seeing this yet at the consumer level. Of three SSDs I added to a Newegg wishlist in June, one is the same price, one has dropped about 6%, and one has increased. A search of comparable drives today shows similar prices. Since I don't NEED a new SSD yet; I guess I will continue to wait.

Distributors and chains want to offload electronics at old, inflated prices. Unfortunately, like with GPUs, They won't be able to. Recession is coming in hard. In Europe cost of heating and electricity 4 x up from January, food 2 x up, fuel already 1,5 x up, and will go higher in winter. And record strong US$. People already started to save money > small business is going bunkrupt. So, see Ya in 2024, maybe '25.

 

[sorten]

I bought a 1TB WD Black in 2020 for $120, and the prices on Newegg for the updated version are almost identical. I'll keep an eye on it because I'd like to upgrade to 2TB.

 

[BSim500]

TBH I am not seeing this yet at the consumer level. Of three SSDs I added to a Newegg wishlist in June, one is the same price, one has dropped about 6%, and one has increased. A search of comparable drives today shows similar prices.

Indeed. The amount of salt I take Techspot's proclaimed "price drops" with is less a grain and more like this...

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

Distributors and chains want to offload electronics at old, inflated prices. Unfortunately, like with GPUs, They won't be able to. Recession is coming in hard. In Europe cost of heating and electricity 4 x up from January, food 2 x up, fuel already 1,5 x up, and will go higher in winter. And record strong US$. People already started to save money > small business is going bunkrupt. So, see Ya in 2024, maybe '25.

So why, eh, motherboards, GPU’s, cars and real estate prices are rocketing to the Jupiter?

 

[noel24]

So why, eh, motherboards, GPU’s, cars and real estate prices are rocketing to the Jupiter?

For the same reason SSDs getting cheaper only on paper: They were built in pandemic, with inflated prices, and now manufacturers want to offload that cost to consumer, without loosing margins.

 

[PEnnn]

This is what, the 10th article about this subject the last 18 months or so?? According to this, SSD's should cost the same as a USB stick by now.

They don't!!

And strange how computer sellers never, ever seem to have SSDs in their pre-built PCs that follow this trend..... Heck, not even Newegg, Amazon or anywhere you can get SSD sticks that are cheaper by now (except for the hapless 128-256GB that almost nobody wants)!!.

But somewhere, they are cheap, maybe on Neptune.

 

[poohbear]

Black Friday 2022 is probably gonna be the best time to upgrade in a long while!

 

[Guillermo Belli]

As others have stated, there has been a lot of talk about this topic for months but prices don't come down, all least not on drives I'll buy. QLC/Dramless crap has gone done down in price though, but why water any money on that?

 

[bviktor]

Any budget PCI-E 4 SSDs? Because the darned PS5 won't even start with a PCI-E 3 one? Because, you know, all PCI-E 3 SSDs are slow, and all PCI-E 4 SSDs are fast? For the players!

 

[bviktor]

So why, eh, motherboards, GPU’s, cars and real estate prices are rocketing to the Jupiter?

Maybe because they're different? GPUs aren't skyrocketing btw, they're also plummeting.

 

[terzaerian]

Cheap SSDs are getting cheaper; more expensive ones are not.

The 256gb category is rife with sales: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100011693 601356772, they're gonna start stuffing them in cereal boxes next.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't know what "price slump" this article refers to because the WD Blue 1TB NVMe drive that I bought well over a year ago is exactly the same price that I paid then. There's no price slump that I can see, in fact, I'd say that the opposite is happening because the SSD to which I refer is only PCIe-3, not 4. With the release of PCIe-4 NVMe drives, the price of PCIe-3 should have fallen but it has remained in exactly the same place.

Therefore, I must disagree with this article. This fall does NOT look like a good time to invest in PCIe-4.0 storage. Maybe this winter, but certainly not this fall. Perhaps there is a "price slump" at the wholesale level but the e-tailers and retailers are clearly just pocketing the difference.

 

[Revolution 11]

I don't know what "price slump" this article refers to because the WD Blue 1TB NVMe drive that I bought well over a year ago is exactly the same price that I paid then. There's no price slump that I can see, in fact, I'd say that the opposite is happening because the SSD to which I refer is only PCIe-3, not 4. With the release of PCIe-4 NVMe drives, the price of PCIe-3 should have fallen but it has remained in exactly the same place.

Therefore, I must disagree with this article. This fall does NOT look like a good time to invest in PCIe-4.0 storage. Maybe this winter, but certainly not this fall. Perhaps there is a "price slump" at the wholesale level but the e-tailers and retailers are clearly just pocketing the difference.

So this is half correct. Definitely the retailers are pocketing the difference for "expensive" SSDs (not just high total cost but NVME type as well).

The prices of NAND is actually falling. This price difference shows up more in drives that have less premium features or BOM like cheap old SATA drives. For example, there is a listing for $135 for a Crucial MX500 2TB SATA drive that normally goes for $170.

Obviously, the solution is to avoid buying until prices actually fall. At some point, retailers will take a loss to get inventory off the shelves.

 

[Avro Arrow]

TBH I am not seeing this yet at the consumer level. Of three SSDs I added to a Newegg wishlist in June, one is the same price, one has dropped about 6%, and one has increased. A search of comparable drives today shows similar prices. Since I don't NEED a new SSD yet; I guess I will continue to wait.

Yeah, I don't see it either. Maybe the wholesale price has dropped but somebody's pocketing the difference.

If the article is true, I would love to replace my 4 8tb drives in my nas with cheap ssds.

Unfortunately, it's not true, at least not here.

Besides, 32TB sounds a lot like bulk storage for which SSDs offer no advantage over HDDs.

I bought a 1TB WD Black in 2020 for $120, and the prices on Newegg for the updated version are almost identical. I'll keep an eye on it because I'd like to upgrade to 2TB.

Yeah, I bought a WD Blue 1TB in 2020 for $105 and it's still $105 at Canada Computers.

Indeed. The amount of salt I take Techspot's proclaimed "price drops" with is less a grain and more like this...

Moving mountains, eh?

So why, eh, motherboards, GPU’s, cars and real estate prices are rocketing to the Jupiter?

It's because there are enough simpletons willing to pay higher prices and no government oversight. Welcome to capitalism where everything is about $.

This is what, the 10th article about this subject the last 18 months or so?? According to this, SSD's should cost the same as a USB stick by now.

They don't!!

It makes me wonder if they know what they're talking about or if they're trying to stimulate the tech economy by getting us to buy stuff.

And strange how computer sellers never, ever seem to have SSDs in their pre-built PCs that follow this trend..... Heck, not even Newegg, Amazon or anywhere you can get SSD sticks that are cheaper by now (except for the hapless 128-256GB that almost nobody wants)!!.

Well, that's because people who buy pre-built PCs are usually noobs who want to pay as little as possible and wouldn't notice the difference anyway.

But somewhere, they are cheap, maybe on Neptune.

Maybe those rings that the JW telescope saw are an advertising beacon!

Black Friday 2022 is probably gonna be the best time to upgrade in a long while!

I hope that you're right. I'm eyeing the R7-5700X.

Maybe because they're different? GPUs aren't skyrocketing btw, they're also plummeting.

They are coming down but not fast enough that I'd call it plummetting.

 

[JohannPopper]

I wouldn't call it a slump. Since the dawn of industrial time, the longer a technology is on the market, the lower the price gets. It's an economic law.

 

[mbk34]

It would be nice if there was a feedback facility on articles so readers could score articles for whether they were interesting and if they were even mildly based on reality. It would be nice to see what sort of feedback the writer is getting before clicking on an article.

 

[punctualturn]

Unfortunately, it's not true, at least not here.

Besides, 32TB sounds a lot like bulk storage for which SSDs offer no advantage over HDDs.

I have very dumb reasons to wast to use SSD, instead of a rust spinning drive:

1- no moving parts.
2- less power required.
3- more reliable?
Again, only reason I would do that was if the prices were really low as these articles keep saying.

 

[terzaerian]

I have very dumb reasons to wast to use SSD, instead of a rust spinning drive:

1- no moving parts.

Well, no moving parts that can be observed by the naked eye, anyway.

3- more reliable?

The jury is still out on this one - recent studies seem to suggest that inside of five years, SSDs are more reliable, and probably beyond that, but personally I'm just more experienced running HDDs and know their failing-to-failure cues better than SSDs, so I'm not keen to dump my storage platters just yet.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I have very dumb reasons to wast to use SSD, instead of a rust spinning drive:

1- no moving parts.
2- less power required.
3- more reliable?
Again, only reason I would do that was if the prices were really low as these articles keep saying.

Well, I haven't seen any SSDs that are 8TB yet. I can't imagine that those will be all that cheap (probably like $1000 each). I agree with #1 and #2 but SSDs do have, overall, a shorter life span than HDDs. That's why you should always use hard drives for page files if possible. Using an SSD for a page file wears it out relatively quickly because it has a set number of rewrites before failure.

 

[Greggs]

I have very dumb reasons to wast to use SSD, instead of a rust spinning drive:

1- no moving parts.
2- less power required.
3- more reliable?
Again, only reason I would do that was if the prices were really low as these articles keep saying.

If by some miracle you could find drives for $50/TB, that would still be $1,600 for 32TB. Even by the most aggressive 20% Q4 drop, it would still cost more than $50/TB. Unless your NAS accepts more than 4 drives, you'd need 8TB SSD like the Samsung 870 QVO QLC drive currently around $700. A TLC drive is quite a bit more expensive. I doubt with the lifespan of these drives you'd recover $1,600 in terms of reliability or electricity.

 

[passingposeidon]

Indeed. The amount of salt I take Techspot's proclaimed "price drops" with is less a grain and more like this...

Techspot seem 2-3 months ahead of reality. I am just starting to see the GPU price drops that were claimed to be happening 2-3 months ago (in terms of the actual prices arriving where they were claimed to be in June).

 

[maddog3012]

I'm confused. It was just a few months ago we were being told to buy SSDs back then, because there was a massive loss of silicon wafers which was going to lead to sky high prices and limited product soon after. Now we are being told prices are slumping and there's more than enough of them? I don't know why I even read this type of stuff anymore.