SSD Storage very cheap right now - FYI

[FourWheelDrift]

1TB SSDs for as low as £35
2TB SSDs for as low as £66.

Or if you want something bigger 4TB SSDs are around £160-170 which is what 2TB ones were not too long ago.

This is for NVMe (PCIe 3 and PCIe 4) and SATA SSDs known good names too like Adata, Crucial, Patriot, Samsung not random Chinese ones.

Storage is cheap right now. Used PC Part Picker to check and that doesn't always pick up on even cheaper sales offers.

[markiii]

pretty good for SSDs shame high capacity HDDs are still a bit high

[FourWheelDrift]

I think the cost of manufacture for all the mechanical parts of an HDD mean they can't go a low as they should.

[donkmeister]

markiii said:

pretty good for SSDs shame high capacity HDDs are still a bit high

Mechanical disk prices seem to be quite volatile - I got some Toshiba N300 NAS drives 2 months back, 18TB for £250 each and now they're going for £280-300 each.

Per TB that is about what I was paying 3 years ago for some 8TB N300s, so the prices haven't really come down.

[Mazinbrum]

What is so special about the SSDs in Apple machines then as they are so expensive?

[captain_cynic]

Mazinbrum said:

What is so special about the SSDs in Apple machines then as they are so expensive?

The Apple Logo on the case.

Other than that they are commodity drives.

[Teppic]

Mazinbrum said:

What is so special about the SSDs in Apple machines then as they are so expensive?

The chips are soldered on to the motherboard.

[Lucas Ayde]

Teppic said:

The chips are soldered on to the motherboard.

That's not the greatest of the sins - you can at least use an external SSD if you later want more space or have issues with the drive. Having the system memory be completely un-expandable (it's part of the APU itself) limits the user's options. Really, at least the 16gig model is a must for anyone who wants to do anything more than basic stuff.

Anyone who does go for one of the new Macs, you'd be as well to pay for the 512GB SSD model too as it has two chips and is faster (as well as potentially having a longer operating lifespan).


Of course both the extra 8gigs of memory and 256gigs of SSD (only possible at purchase time) are horrifically expensive options compared to market cost of RAM and SSDs.

[tangerine_sedge]

Lucas Ayde said:

Teppic said:

The chips are soldered on to the motherboard.

That's not the greatest of the sins - you can at least use an external SSD if you later want more space or have issues with the drive. Having the system memory be completely un-expandable (it's part of the APU itself) limits the user's options. Really, at least the 16gig model is a must for anyone who wants to do anything more than basic stuff.

Anyone who does go for one of the new Macs, you'd be as well to pay for the 512GB SSD model too as it has two chips and is faster (as well as potentially having a longer operating lifespan).


Of course both the extra 8gigs of memory and 256gigs of SSD (only possible at purchase time) are horrifically expensive options compared to market cost of RAM and SSDs.

Like many answers, it depends what you want to use it for - I have a company supplied bottom of the range Macbook (M1) and it's more than adequate. All my docs and most of my apps are in the cloud, and my spreadsheets are never that large. For all intents and purposes it's a shiny terminal...