FYI: pricedrops on SSD and RAM incoming

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ss…this-year.html

Solid State Drives are becoming increasingly cheaper, it is now reported that there is an oversupply of flash memory with low demand for notebooks and smartphones back. This year, the priced could be halved compared to what it was last year.
NAND manufacturers want to reduce the production of flash memory. In addition, investments are expected to fall by two percent, having already been dropped by ten percent last year. DRAMeXchange expects that prices for Flash memory products will be around 20 percent in the first quarter of 2019. For the second quarter, and maybe 15 percent and in the last two quarters, it will be another ten percent per quarter. For the year, the price of flash memory would be roughly be reduced by half.

I've compared prices and yes, generally for the same cash you can now buy 4 times more SSD capacity than 2-3 years ago. If it'll drop even further as suggested above, I guess it's time to ditch buzzing and clicking HDDs out of rigs and use on docks or within USB capable cases as external backups.


https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/dram-…ews-59788.html

In a new report this week, DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, said it expects DRAM prices to drop nearly 20 percent in Q1 2019. The prediction comes after RAM vendors saw relatively stable prices in November and December of last year.

No existing game needs more than 8Gb of RAM, but if you were following Star Citizen news, it listed 16Gb as minimum. There is a slight possibility another unexpected title does this requirement too, so if you're still on 8Gb machine, this prediction is very good news.

The next time my machine breaks down, I know I'm going to either seriously upgrade my current solid state drive, or, more likely, just pick up a second one. I paid quite a bit for the one I have now, which I bought seven years ago, so I'm looking forward to getting some extra bang for my buck next time around. I must say, seven years of use and this current drive has given me no issues at all, so I'll likely stay with the same maker.

Good news, thanks! I'm planning to buy a new rig in the second half of this year (job dependent) so it's good to hear some prices are coming down a bit.

Originally Posted by Pongo
Good news, thanks! I'm planning to buy a new rig in the second half of this year (job dependent) so it's good to hear some prices are coming down a bit.

I plan to do a CPU/MoBo/RAM update (from DDR3 to DDR4) at that time as well. I hope 3rd gen Ryzen deliver what's been hyped and that RAM prices don't jump again by that time.

8gb will run all games as long as you're not doing anything else. If you're streaming or doing other things, you'll want more. Might as well take advantage.

Also, depending on mobo and ram, going to dual channel instead of 4 slots can improve latency performance (if you're looking to squeeze that performance). Change those 2 x 4gb sticks to 2 x 8gb sticks, instead of adding 2 more.

What I need is larger storage to get cheaper for my unRAID/Plex/ownCloud. Make that happen Joxer.

well it is a combination of over-production but also newer technology was already driving prices down on ssd before the oversupply. Sadly newer consumer ssd have slower write speeds.

I have also recently come to experience how bad SSDs in block writing/re-writing and their atrocious delays in active garbage collection because of this (which of course does not happen in HDD as you can write single bits anywhere on the disk).

This is probably why SSD are best for OS as a lower level, read-only non-volatile cache.

Depends on ssd model; the better ones have fantastic write speeds. You just have to pick the right ssd for the task and understand that not all ssd are created equal.

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
I have also recently come to experience how bad SSDs in block writing/re-writing and their atrocious delays in active garbage collection because of this (which of course does not happen in HDD as you can write single bits anywhere on the disk).

This is probably why SSD are best for OS as a lower level, read-only non-volatile cache.

Not having a SSD now is like not having a dedicated video card. It is night & day for loading maps in games, specially those made in Unity that I've seen, although even with it some games take like 20 seconds to load a level (I can only imagine how long they would take with a HDD!).

When I was at one of the National Labs 8 years ago I asked if those new fangled SSD's would make any difference to storage speed seeing as that is still the biggest obstacle in any machine's speed.

The guy said they wouldn't being that there were so optimized (I think they were running 1000's of HDD's in RAID 60). However, he did think they could help in caching.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Not having a SSD now is like not having a dedicated video card. It is night & day for loading maps in games, specially those made in Unity that I've seen, although even with it some games take like 20 seconds to load a level (I can only imagine how long they would take with a HDD!).

I still can't believe that MS won't optimize Windows for a hybrid system. At $135 for a 1TB SSD its becoming less of an issue, however having your Program Files directory, Documents, et al. on your OS drive is a giant pain when its an SSD.

They should have a built in method to move those to your storage drive and leave Windows and ProgramApps in that drive alone. I've tried to come up with a method to automate symlinks to do this - what a pain.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
I still can't believe that MS won't optimize Windows for a hybrid system. At $135 for a 1TB SSD its becoming less of an issue, however having your Program Files directory, Documents, et al. on your OS drive is a giant pain when its an SSD.

They should have a built in method to move those to your storage drive and leave Windows and ProgramApps in that drive alone. I've tried to come up with a method to automate symlinks to do this - what a pain.

They already do?

From a national lab perspective if this was only 8 years ago ur guy was an idiot. Not only are they faster in all aspects but one of their key advantages when it comes to large arrays is very low power draw. Naturally 8 years ago the available drives were still fairly small (I think 4tb?); but anyone in their right mind knew they would be much larger in the future just on premise of the basic technology.
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My general view had been by 2022 give or a take a year large form (8tb or larger) will hit the consumer market and no more than 4x hd prices. My estimate (made 3 years ago) might be off a bit - right now I'm concern that I was optmisitic as i still only see large drives in the enterprise market but I still have 3 more years with my finger cross.
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btw Power consumption is a big deal (and major $$$) in large data centers.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
When I was at one of the National Labs 8 years ago I asked if those new fangled SSD's would make any difference to storage speed seeing as that is still the biggest obstacle in any machine's speed.

The guy said they wouldn't being that there were so optimized (I think they were running 1000's of HDD's in RAID 60). However, he did think they could help in caching.

That looks like an error prone manual process.

Originally Posted by Caddy
They already do?

Originally Posted by you
That looks like an error prone manual process.

It also come with 3 special button below for those who are UNC-path challenged.

I understand though. Some may not be happy with the extra 2 minutes required to customize their OS.

I think you confused my comment with difficulty of a onetime setup and having to update the state of the system overtime as software install changes. It is normal for people to be confused by long term time impact on the health of a system but none-the-less your confusion does not impact my comment that it is an error prone system over the life of the system.

Originally Posted by Caddy
It also come with 3 special button below for those who are UNC-path challenged.

I understand though. Some may not be happy with the extra 2 minutes required to customize their OS.

Originally Posted by you
I think you confused my comment with difficulty of a onetime setup and having to update the state of the system overtime as software install changes. It is normal for people to be confused by long term time impact on the health of a system but none-the-less your confusion does not impact my comment that it is an error prone system over the life of the system.

Nope no confusion, just amusement. Some people spend 100 dollars arguing about a penny problem:

Originally Posted by you
From a national lab perspective if this was only 8 years ago ur guy was an idiot.

I stopped reading right there.

Originally Posted by Caddy
They already do?

I've actually done this. What I'm getting at is there should be an option for hybrid installs during the install itself. We are already getting cloud storage pushed down our throat, so something like this would be useful when your D drive is there.

They should also optimize the ProgramApps better. I'm sure all those files don't need to be there for optimum application speed. Some of those could stay in Program Files.

The other problem, of course, is when stupid apps hardcode installs to the C drive. There ought to be a law against that.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
I've actually done this. What I'm getting at is there should be an option for hybrid installs during the install itself. We are already getting cloud storage pushed down our throat, so something like this would be useful when your D drive is there.

They should also optimize the ProgramApps better. I'm sure all those files don't need to be there for optimum application speed. Some of those could stay in Program Files.

The other problem, of course, is when stupid apps hardcode installs to the C drive. There ought to be a law against that.

Yep, that can be annoying.

I’m hoping with Microsoft’s nice new ReFS and Storage Spaces, that they they’re really taking file integrity and performance seriously, but considering they took ReFS away from the standard Pro version, I don’t think average consumers will see it any time soon. However, Bitlocker is something MS did right when it comes to OS features that just work, and work well.