Tracking SSD costs

[TooNice]

Are there any price search engines or other websites track historical costs of various product with nice graph (I seem to remember Hexus had one for Scan on the products they review). I am particularly interested in following the cost of SSD drives (especially Vertex) in the next couple of months just to see how quickly/much prices are moving on those. Still, it's a bit too much effort and time for me to do it manually/consistantly, so I was wondering if there is anything I could go for such information.

Just for the sake of it, I'll put the price of the Vertex on Novatech today:

OCZ Vertex @Novatech:
30GB: £115
60GB: £163
120GB: £305 (Best price per GB)
250GB: £621

[arthurleung]

The price is unlikely to budge in a predictable way as the stock in any UK retailer will sell these SSDs at a considerably lower pace than other countries in the world.

Some older 120/128G SSD is selling at half the price you listed in Asia and the price difference is enough to buy a hardware RAID controller with cache.

[TooNice]

A little over a month later and the price of the Vertex have gone.. the wrong direction. And by quite a lot.

30GB: £144.10 (Scan) (+£29)
60GB: £218.50 (Novatech's 'Hot Deal') (+£55.50!)
120GB: £362 (Novatech) (+£57)
250GB: £621 (Novatech) (No change)

I am clearly not impressed. Is there a shortage because people are picking them up by the dozens, is it the value of the pound or are e-tailers just trying to squeeze as much as they can?

[snootyjim]

I'm interested, but not £362 interested. Neither am I £305 interested though, so I don't know why I'm complaining.

I think it's just the usual price fluctuation post-introduction, especially as the Vertex drives are very highly recommended... it's very discouraging though, who would want to buy something they know has increased in price by 20% in four weeks? I'll be holding on at least until it all settles down.

This is a good thread by the way, would be great if you could keep it up month by month.

[Hawker1986]

I just got a G.skill falcon 128GB (exact same drive as the vertex) for £258 from memory C (it was on special offer and I had a 5% voucher code) but its still considerably cheaper from there than a vertex from anywhere else.

Hawker

[TooNice]

^ Yeah, I just came across that searching. Though is it true that you can't use the trim software with it? Not that it matters - by £100+ matter! Is that voucher something you can share, or was is it a use once type of code?

I basically told myself that I will go SSD after it costs no more than £2 per GB. To be honest, at £258, it is almost tempting. Although given how long I've put off my build (just don't have time), I may as well wait a few months and see how pricing move.

I'll try to keep this thread updated on a monthly basis (until I buy what I need ), but it would be great if people can contribute especially if there is a decent shift in price. Oh yeah, given that I don't have time to look up SSDs, please let me know if/when the Vertex is superseded

[Hawker1986]

G.skill have the same TRIM command called wiper, its on their forum. Its the same program its actually produced by the people that make the drive not OCZ or G.Skill. The voucher code I got off google, im sure you could find it if you looked. I would def recommend the upgrade, everything is much snappier and im really happy.

Hawker

[TooNice]

How much do they charge for delivery?

[Hawker1986]

Depends what you want I think the cheapest is RM £4.5, but they do courier for a bit more too.

Hawker

[pollaxe]

I've been umming and ahhing about trying an SSD and I've finally dipped my toe and gone for the Falcon 128 thanks mainly to seeing Hawker1986's suggestion (and subsequent Googling!)

I went for the £4.50 recorded delivery as I'll be away for a few days this week and it should arrive at work whilst I'm gone.

[Hawker1986]

You wont be disappointed, its a great drive, from my RAID 0 array my boot time has halved, if I had some more SATA connections I would be tempted to get another and RAID them, but instead now ill just force myself to wait for SATA 3 and the Vertex 2 drives .

Hawker

[TooNice]

I couldn't bear paying £258 for that Falcon at the time, so I am still tracking costs of SSD. So for our June edition we have:

OCZ Vertex:
30GB: £128 (MemoryC) (-£16) /£144.10 (Scan) (No Change)
60GB: £199 (MemoryC) (-£19.50) (Out of stock) / £228.65 (Novatech's 'Hot Deal') (+£10)
120GB: £316 (MemoryC) (-£46) / £345 (Novatech) (-£17)
250GB: £619 (MemoryC) (-£2) / £673.75 (Novatech) (+£52)

Conclusion: Looking at the same E-tailers as I did last month, only the price of the 120GB has moved downward. MemoryC however proved to be the cheaper than Novatech/Scan for SSD drives, so they'll become my new benchmark next month (unless Novatech/Scan regain their competitiveness).

G.Skill Falcon (price all taken from MemoryC unless otherwise stated):
60GB: £167.61
120GB: £244 (out of stock)/ £283@Novatech
250GB: £522

Conclusion: With the Falcon, we are getting close to £2/GB. Unless the price gap narrows between OCZ and Falcons, I may only look at Falcons from next month onward.

Please let me know if there are any other SSD based on the Indilinx that are priced competitively. Or perhaps another drive with comparable performance/price worth looking at.

[arthurleung]

I still failed to see the point picking those SSD specificly with cache. When getting a hardware raid adapter is not that expensive, and can be used with standard HDDs.

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by arthurleung

I still failed to see the point picking those SSD specificly with cache. When getting a hardware raid adapter is not that expensive, and can be used with standard HDDs.

How much are they?

[drunkenmaster]

Originally Posted by arthurleung

I still failed to see the point picking those SSD specificly with cache. When getting a hardware raid adapter is not that expensive, and can be used with standard HDDs.

because, afaik, the older core series and the like, they might not have cache and they might work better on hardware raid cards, but they still don't offer the same performance as the newer drives and its that simple. A core under perfect conditions is still not getting close to the Vertex's performance, in either writing or i/o's.

If you want uber speed, which really, is why you want an ssd(except for notebooks and the like) then the "cheap" older drives aren't that fast, and honestly aren't very cheap anyway.

I'm sure some places will have like, 5 drives of some discontinued drive for a ridiculous price now and then, and they will end up being good value and I'll pick one up eventually for my laptop, but price/size/performance, in general the cheap/crap ones aren't very good.

[icemantaz]

so who is the manufacturer of both these drives then?