1y ago

In 2017, I bought a 1TB 960 Evo for 466€. Now, in 2023 the 1TB 970 Evo Plus is 43€.

It's incredible how much the prices have fallen and that's how it should be. Sure, I bought the 960 close to launch but still the difference is staggering.

The 960 Evo still chugs along albeit it's a new one because a few months after I bought it, I had to RMA it. I guess that's what happens when you are an early adopter. I lost a few hours of work when the original 960 Evo decided to stop working but it also taught me to be more paranoia with backups.

151 comments

You young fellas sit back, I'mma tell you about the time in '96 that I bought a 1GB hard drive for a thousand doll-hairs. And then later that year got 64MB of RAM for another thousand doll-hairs, and the next month the price dropped in half. I could run two java programs AT THE SAME TIME!
- Our first family computer they offered to double the HDD space to 20mb for an extra $500. "You'll never fill it up!" they claimed. My dad, being a practical guy, couldn't figure out why he would want to pay extra for something he'd never use.
  
  My dad got tired of struggling so he just told me the future proof a build.
  He said "Max out everything" So I did.
  128gb ddr4 ram, ryzen 5600 4.6ghz 12 core hyperthreaded CPU, nvidia 2080. (He wouldn't let me get the 40x card)
- No joke though, in the 90s you could buy a HDD with a size advertised on the box and get it home to find that the drive was actually bigger than advertised. They were making advances so fast in the manufacturing that they literally didn't have the time (or it wasn't worth the cost) to keep up with updating the boxes.
- My father went a bit nuts and bought our first family computer some time around '85. It was an 8088 Turbo XT with a 10MB hard drive. It was something like a $3,000 computer (which would be similar to $8,500 today, with inflation). That hard drive was so big, we thought we'd never fill it. The biggest game we had at the time, Star Flight took up two 360KB floppies, and both my brother and I could each have our own copies on the hard drive, without worrying about space. It was amazing.
  But, tech moves on and what was once "bleeding edge" becomes old hat. I'm pretty sure there are calculators which can emulate that entire 8088. And, 10MB is a rounding error on modern drives. I also have little doubt that, 40 years from now we'll look back at 1TB hard drives and think "oh, how quaint".
- I bought a Pentium 75 in 1995. It had a 1GB hdd and 16MB of ram with Windows 3.11 and 28.8k modem. It cost me $5000. In 1995 dollars that's $9,977.92 which seems insane.
- Ram is $50/mb, HDD $1/mb.
  A blank CD-R is $10, but stores as much as 400 floppies!
  
  A blank CD-R is $10, but stores as much as 400 floppies!
  But you also need to purchase a CD drive which is another $15 making it more expensive than a 128 GB SSD.
- First time I built a computer (late '97), I had to settle for the 850MB HDD. The 1GB was just outside my budget.
  
  The family computer had a 40 gig hard drive until about 2008.
- I got excited when we got a math-coprocessor for our 386 33MHz. I tried my hardest to get a sound blaster card so I didn’t have to use PC speaker to play games (namely TFX), but it was deemed too expensive for little reward.
  
  Your parents weren't worried about the math co-processor doing all your homework for you? That was the GPT-387? :-)
- I once was able to store everything I needed on a couple of 100 mb Zip disks. And amazingly they didn't fail on me despite using them all the time.
- Well To be honest java is a slug, especially on old hardware. If you wanted speed you would use some c or Assembler program....
  
  I had been programming C for almost a decade at that time, and was tired of working so low level. I hoped Java would get me higher level, but it didn't work out. Eventually ended up on Python, which was fairly light weight, fast enough, but a joy to program (unlike java).

For over a decade I've been waiting for HDD prices to fall to 10 € per TB. Guess I'll see that in SSDs first.
- Yup, there’s a Linustech tip video about this. HDD prices have kinda been set in stone for a good while now
  
  Couldn't find it within 5 minutes of searching - therefor I accounce that such a video does not exist
  
  So, maybe HDD can hardly get any more cheaper as there is little to non room for improvement while SSD can get higher NAND transistors density.
  
  do you think you can link the video?
- We're very close. 30TB HAMR drives are expected later this year, and 50TB a year or two later. I think HDDs will continue to present the best value for data hoarders.
- For NAS purposes that'd be delicious.
  
  Until you would have to replace a HDD: +23 hours of nerve racking RAID repair time for 10TB drive at 120MB/s Even with some advanced (like ZFS etc.) system you can't go around the fact the HDDs are slow.
  And when the HDD fails, you can't read it. It's toast. Some cheap non-volatile memory devices are like this too, but good ones go into read-only mode and you can at least attempt data recovery from them if no better option is left.
  I'm liking that it is possible get cheap+good 1TB NVMe devices for less than 100€. The consumer SATA market for large SSDs (capacity over 1TB) is unfortunately quite dry. I need replacement for HDDs and even if the speed is capped by SATA bus it would be an massive improvement.
  
  https://youtu.be/5QH8Dj6g_Nk Might be what OP watched too. I was surprised they've gotten so cheap.
  
  That's a good point. Maybe I should upgrade my NAS to have SSD's now.
- HDD probably cost more to manufacture

This is how hardware should work! Overtime what was bleeding edge is now the norm and as such should be priced accordingly..... Looking at you Nvidia
- nVidia GPUs:
  970GTX was 329$ in 2014
  1070GTX was 379$ in 2016
  2070RTX was 499$ in 2018
  3070RTX was 499$ in 2020
  4070RTX is 599$ in 2023
  Probably, the 5070 in 2025-6 will be 650-700.
  
  Lol a 4070 in Canada is $1200.
  
  Then ya got the 8800GTX in 2006, with a MSRP at a cool FIVE HUNDRED NINETY NINE US DOLLARS, or 900USD in now-money.
  Granted, that was an outlier at the time, but still!
  I opted for 2x7900GT cards in SLI in my first self-built monster machine, for Crysis. 330USD each. That thing was a monster. Ran Crysis at 40-50FPS!
  …bought an Athlon 64x2 4400+ for some 460USD… it dropped to like 200 just a month or so later when Intel’s Core series was a smash hit.
  
  its hurt i pay back in time a gtx titan x .... it was 1000€. for the top of the top. and today the top line is ... way fuking more....

$109 for an 840 EVO 250 GB in November 2014. Still rocking it to this day. Was absolutely thrilled to get it then. People don't fully grasp the paradigm shift that SSDs brought in terms of boot times. For practically the first time in personal computing the average user had a quantifiable metric to judge a PC's speed. It's arguably the largest leap in terms of technology advancement to speed advancement in PCs.
- Which is exactly why I dislike the fact that nvme happened.
  The world had finally standardized on one physical size of hard drive, 2.5 inch sata. You could tell your technophobic aunt to just go buy one of these and it'll work.
  
  I love nvme, personally. On the board is always better, and one screw is even easier than four. Because of nvme the only thing holding back SFF in the average use case is power supplies, and bricked cords are decent enough in the meantime.
  
  I, for one, am happy that technological innovation isn’t tethered to Auntie Agnes ability to comprehend.
- I'll be making the leap to SSD in the near future. I picked up a couple m.2s a couple months ago and just haven't gotten around to adding them. Well, turns out it'll just be one because adding the second nukes all but 2 of my SATA ports and my 4x pcie apparently... At least the second one won't go to waste in my laptop.
- I had a 2010 Macbook Pro that I was about to throw away a couple of years ago because it was unusable - beach ball of death constantly. I bought a 500GB SSD for around $70 AUD, went on YouTube and about an hour later booted up; it was like a new laptop. I eventually chucked it earlier this year because the battery had it and I didn't want to spend any more on it.

Just today I was wondering why I only have a 500GB sata ssd in my Laptop and then I realized that I bought it in 2018 and the price difference was just not worth it at the time. Nowadays it feels like one might as well get a 2TB nvme. If prices keep falling like this soon a 4x4TB nvme NAS will be positively cheap!
- Sadly HDDs aren't going this low

My first job was in a computer store in 1994 and a 4MB stick of RAM for a PC was $140.
- Those were very important 4MB RAM sticks, you needed at least 4MB and recommended 8MB of RAM to play the just released Doom!

It's about time. SSD prices stagnated for years!
Here are my purchases over the past years:
2015 - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SATA - $164
2016 - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2 SATA - $168
2016 - Samsung 850 EVO 1TB M.2 SATA - $262
2017 - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SATA - $198 ($30 more than 2 yrs prior)
2019 - Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SATA - $160 (finally a decent price on 1TB even though it was SATA)
2020 - Samsung 870 EVO+ 2TB NVME - $270
2022 - Samsung 870 EVO+ 2TB NVME - $204
2022 - Samsung 870 EVO 4TB SATA - $396
Today the Samsung 970 EVO+ NVME 2TB is $109. The 870 EVO 4TB SATA is $170. Each about half the price as one year ago.
- I ordered a 870 EVO 4TB since all the time spent on self hosted has been eating up my NAS storage.
  
  The 870 QVO 8TB is on for $320 today!
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089C3TZL9

It's wild how cheap SSDs and ram are right now. It's so tempting to upgrade both on my main PC.
- What’s stopping you?
  
  The absence of a bottleneck.
  
  Mainly my current setup is pretty decent and a meaningful upgrade would be a few hundred dollars even at current amazing prices.
  With that said, I have taken advantage of the amazing prices in my homelab.
  32 gb ram and 1tb Samsung 980 Evo gen 4 nvme for $120 is insanity compared to like 2 years ago.
- Doing it on Black Friday is even more tempting

It's amazing seeing 2TB M.2 NVME drives being sold for less than what I bought my original 120GB SATA SSD for.
- as the recent proud owner of a 1TB and a 2TB NVME drive I agree whole heartedly.
  December 27, 2013 I bought a 250GB 840 EVO for $179.12 December 2, 2022 I bought a 2TB 970 EVO NVME for $166.41 December 5, 2022 I bought a 1TB 970 EVO NVME for $89.99
  It's bonkers and its makes my computer happy.

I bought 4TB Crucial ssd, MX500 for 87€, brand new. It was on huge sale. And 2y ago i paid almost 60€ for 512 gb same model... so yeah

You should note that the 960 is the one where Samsung got caught swapping in sub par bad performance parts into the same name. That's part why it got THAT cheap rather than it being a natural evolution.

Don't worry guys, manufacturer's are doing their best to cut supply to raise prices again. Gotta love them.

Good to see the prices are going down when everything else is getting crazzy expensive.
I bought some SSD in 2019 worth of 290$ and payed with 0.5 ethereum. That would be 900+$ today kekw

Deflation is beautiful, send more of those
- It's only deflated because our storage needs have vastly inflated! This is like 6 AAA games and maybe a couple movies
  
  How many AAA games do you keep installed at the same time? I max out at maybe three, personally. Realistically I'd be more than content with just two: current game + next game.
  
  Honestly storage requirements haven't gone up that much since 2014. Storage speed did go up tho
  
  Yes, and I also think this is because there are more and more storage providers

I plan on building a new desktop sometime around black friday. Here's hoping we'll get some great deals like this then, too?
- Don't wait for black Friday, get the parts in pieces as you find them on sale.
  Black Friday is when companies dump subpar parts to low prices just to get rid of them. Don't bank it all on that sale.
  
  Good call, and good idea! Duly noted.
- Set your build goals now (check !buildapc@lemmy.world ) and use alerts/price trackers to see good deals. There are some good deals on Black Friday but many are bogus, its to better to check every now and then for deals.

It's been this way continuously since computer memory was thought up.
Here's a chart of memory price change since 1957
https://jcmit.net/mem2015.htm

Amazing to see!
By this point do USB sticks make sense anymore as opposed to a super fast SSD inside an enclosure? It seems like the former hasn't seen any technical progress in years either
- I usually have one USB stick tied to my keys, just in case. I can't imagine carrying an enclosed SSD everywhere with me.
  
  They can be failry small though, no? The NVME form factor allows for something that is maybe two times longer than a usual USB stick, so it's still reasonably small and a tad harder to lose
  
  This is why I have a USB Hub and MicroSD cards for drives that aren’t OS related.
  I have
  256GB Mac
  256GB “Work In Progress” microSD Card (torrents, files I am working on, encoding, etc.)
  2 1TB MicroSD Cards for DRM Purchases (iTunes and Apple TV) + Non DRM content (content I ripped and encoded to convert to digital and podcasts, audio, video, etc.)
  I just really like the portability of SD Cards and USB sticks.

Side note, join us at !buildapcsales@lemmy.ml for deals like this. We could use more folks in the growing community!
- Cool but I see these are mostly for the US market.
  
  Feel free to make some posts for your market! We are not a picky group.

Even internal hard drives are falling in price every few months. A WD Red Pro 18 TB is cheaper than a 16TB two months ago. I guess the strategy is to wait until the last moment before you buy storage now.

My first SSD was a 128 GB OCz Vertex3. Price comparable to the 2600K I bought it with.
- I had some OCZ drive that I think cost me £130 for 120GB. Pretty much £1 per GB. It's crazy just how cheap storage is now. I purchased a 240GB SSD today for £13.99. A considerable upgrade to the current mechanical drive in my kids laptop!
  
  Get off my lawn! My first 260MB Harddisk cost me around €300 25 years ago. Still, boot times where similar to that of a modern PC which has1000x more CPU power, ram and transfer speed...

Pretty sure Apple still charges £300 😂

I wonder then, if for low capacity NAS home systems using these consumer drives is a good idea. Drives certified with "NAS reliabilty", ssd or hdd, are still as expensive as they have always been, is it a ripoff?

For the longest time, SSD prices stayed high. I think with supply outstripping demand by so much finally forced their hand to drop by quite a bit. Instead of a smooth decrease over time, it feels like sudden drops. Also, QLC means higher storage density for cheap.

I'm picking up a 2TB 980 Pro for $99 on Prime Day today, it's ridiculous and wild.
- That costs as much as my 840 EVO (120 GB) did in 2014.
- Ended up ordering 2 of those myself. For the price, couldn't pass it up. Going to replace the 1Tb ssd's I have now, and turn the old ones into external storage. All my Steam games are taking up too much space.

Seeing this so cheap knowing that my motherboard doesnt have nvme slot 😭
- Could just get a pcie to nvme m.2 adapter, think Sabrent does a pretty good one
  Though it depends on you having spare pcie slots (I'm not 100% sure but I believe the speeds should still be better than sata but you'd have to check)
  
  cries in laptop

the price of early adoption

In 2016 I bought a 512gb 950pro for £200, not only is it still my boot drive it still has the same windows 10 installation, even though it's on a completely different motherboard.
Since that new motherboard has three more M.2 slots than the 2016 platform, I just picked up one of the 970 evos in the OP for £43. It can fill in for my current SATA SSD steam cache, which can in turn take the place of my one remaining HDD and I'll be free of spinning iron.
Although... Now I look at it, the 2tb version is less than twice the price...
- Oh, and that 2tb of iron was £87 over ten years ago

I just saw that the 2TB WD Black SN850 (with cooler) costs the same 150€ today that I paid for the cooler-less 1TB version about two years ago. And the newer X version goes for even less…-

My Dell XPS has a 256gb nvme for it's OS maybe it's time I upgraded it 🤔

It's incredible how much the price of flash storage has fallen lately. I had to replace a 1tb 2.5' drive lately and an SSD was €5 more than a mechanical drive.

Cheap af!

In 2018 I bought a 500Gb 780(?) (Still SATA, NVMe was still not really generally available) for 150€. I think it now goes for like 30€.

That's good to see. :) What's a good and reliable brand/model to look out for? I don't trust many of those unknown (to me at least) manufacturers with the cheapest prices.
- Samsung is starting to have major issues. There are lists online telling you which batches are bad. A bunch of my SSDs from them died, and if you're outside the US, they won't warranty them. They tell you to go to the store you bought them from, and the store you bought them from tells you to go to Samsung.
  I'm no longer buying Samsung. They can burn in hell.
- Samsung has always seemed like the reliable (albeit expensive) option to me. I personally went with a 2TB Sabrent NVMe because it was on sale and it hasn't failed me yet.

Puts a tear to my eye. My laptop still has a 256gb m.2 SSD as its main drive because everything else was too expensive at the time.

Just made a new build, 6 tb of Evo was less than $300. Prices are great at the moment

I feel like you paid a lot for that SSD, I think I bought 1TB for 150€ at about that time. Still, prices now are great
- I went on https://geizhals.eu/samsung-ssd-960-evo-1tb-mz-v6e1t0bw-a1511201.html clicked on the right side where you have the price history, clicked on max and when I bought it January 2017 the price was between 440€-460€. Only in late 2018 it went under 300€.

What's the catch?
I mean is it getting cheaper because SSDs generally have lower life expectancy?
- More supply & lower demand = cheaper goods, plus technology that creates it gets more wide spread so competition arises, and many other factors contribute to the fall in prices such as an improved model coming out making older models cheaper.
  
  The increasing spread of cheap good technology isn't really about the new hotness coming out it's about last decade stuff finally becoming affordable.

And people still say Bitcoin would fall apart if it increased it's blocksize limit that was set over a decade a go...

151 comments