Why does ssd cost so much

Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Normal HDD costs go up very little as drives get larger. The cost per GB goes up as the number of GB rises.

The cost of an SSD isn't so heavily tied to the actual storage media, but to the parts that manage that storage. Larger SSDs require more sophisticated controllers to be able to address that storage. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Gadgets Why are SSD so expensive? What is an SSD? What are the benefits of having an SSD? When should you buy an SSD? Is the price worth it for SSD? How much do I need to store before buying an SSD?

What size SSD should I buy? If you can put more than GB of stuff on your OS drive - do it! Remember that one day you'll want to upgrade your graphics card and other components as well somehow RAM counts. If you have 16GB of RAM, this is probably the sweet spot between capacity and performance 2TB is what I consider to be an "ideal" size - it gives just enough room so that you don't have to worry about running out anytime soon or even within a few years.

There are no benefits to having this much storage space inside your PC that you can't achieve with an external HDD - which are cheaper, by the way, even if you have to buy two of them instead of one giant SSD. Benefits of having a solid-state drive let's take a look at the benefits of an SSD Faster access times. No moving parts. Better performance for your OS. Warm, cool or cold.

Lighter than an HDD. The first one is the market itself. Since the demand for retail SSDs on the market is rather low, vendors make less profit--if at all--from them and therefore have to increase the price to cover the production cost. This is a catch, as the high pricing is also a reason why the demand is low, mostly because general consumers just can't afford them. The second aspect, which is more interesting, is that large SSD manufacturers typically have direct access to the supply or large contracts for it.

This means they have the power to hoard the raw materials used to make SSDs, making smaller manufacturers have to pay higher price to get their share. They in turn have to increase the price for the final product. This wouldn't be a problem, however, if the large manufacturers also focused on making SSDs, which they don't, at least for now. And there's a reason for it.

The majority of SSDs on the market come in the standard 2. The most popular usage of SSDs among consumers is as the main drive of a computer. This market, however, has always been dominated by hard drives, so naturally, manufacturers would first want to find another market where there's less competition.

And there just happens to be one: mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Wells Fargo senior analyst Aaron Rakers in August predicted enterprise storage buyers will start to prefer SSDs when prices fall to five times or less that of hard disk drives.

He noted an 18x premium in for enterprise SSDs over mass capacity nearline disk drives. This dropped to a 9x premium in He did not predict when the 5x premium crossover point would be reached. Intel thinks it will happen in just under two years time. SSDs will reach total cost of ownership crossover with hard disk drives in His insight is also called the Experience Curve because manufacturing shops learn through experience and become more efficient.