News SSDs in Laptops and Desktops Cost Too Damn Much

[Admin]

There's no reason for cramped c: drives when SSDs are too cheap and games are so big.

SSDs in Laptops and Desktops Cost Too Damn Much : Read more

 

[bit_user]

For example, Dell

Yup. At work, we just bought new Dell desktop machines for our team. After looking at their storage options, we opted to take their lowest-spec option and add storage via aftermarket parts. Not only were their larger SSDs overpriced, but they maxed out at just 2 TB and we wanted 4 TB.

Another weird thing about Dell is just how long it took to be able to order a Precision workstation with an i9 Alder Lake CPU. Until earlier this year, the highest they went were i7's. Probably a market segmentation tactic, trying to push people into higher-end workstations. That said, you can sometimes arrange a custom configuration by calling their sales people, beyond what's configurable on their website.

 

[RichardtST]

Dell for sure. I just built a pair of 5950X 64GB RAM 5TB monsters each for less than the price of what they wanted for a 4TB NVME. I just smiled and will happily use that as my excuse to keep on building... (I build our company machines because its cheaper and they are more reliable). But they charge that nonsense because 99.9% of the population has no clue and probably doesn't want to. To us Tom's readers its just silly, of course.

 

[DavidLejdar]

Basically, I agree. For my self-build, I am doing it a bit differently though. My "boot drive" is only 1 TB, a KINGSTON SNV2S1000G in a chipset M.2 slot, with the OS, browser, game launcher clients, and some other software on it. And then there is a faster 2TB NVMe with nothing but a number of games on it. And a 2TB SATA SSD (and two more M.2 slots left). Not sure if it is more efficient to have OS data and gaming data on two separate drives. But it works fine for me, in particular as my more expensive NVMe is idle most of the time, which I assume helps in not wearing it down too fast (my boot drive still is at 100% too though, after half a year).

But yeah, only 1TB in total for everything, including for the Pagefile when a system comes with limited RAM, difficult to imagine how that is supposed to work out when one does more than to just browse some websites.

 

[gg83]

Its always been like this I think. I would always buy the lower ram and storage option as long as I could upgrade it myself.

 

[ikjadoon]

HP has reasonable SSD pricing, esp. for PCIe 4.0 SSDs: 512 GB → 2 TB is +$190, which is only $100-ish over retail.

Microsoft, on the other hand, likes to bleed people dry, even worse than Dell and Apple.

 

[PEnns]

They are all hell bent on fleecing their customers. (maybe there are exceptions, but I have yet to see one)

Because they think, and they are correct 90% of the time, their customers will pay anything for an upgrade (a cool $100+ to go from 500 to 1 TB!), due to apathy, ignorance or laziness.

And it doesn't help either when many techie websites list their weekly / monthly / quarterly BS of "Best Laptop blabla..." which includes a pathetic 256 Gig or even a 128 for boot drive & storage!

 

[Darkoverlordofdata]

And how many people actually need that much storage space? When the 1TB hard drive in my Dell died, I replaced it with a cheap 250 gb ssd. After installing linux, all my software and vm and images, I still have 100 gb free. I will never use all 250 gb.

 

[TechieTwo]

It's a lot like buying a car - They charge whatever they believe the traffic will bear. $3000 for a navigation system that is inferior to a $300 portable Nav is pretty outrageous but common. It boost the ASP and profit margins significantly. It's no different with PCs or laptops.

Most consumers are not technically savy enough to change SSDs or DRAM so they pay the price if they really desire the increased capacities. Most consumers that use a PC for work do not need large drives nor lots of DRAM but for those that do there are pricey options.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Same principle behind Samsung selling us a 990 Pro 1TB for $100 and then charging $100 per 128GB in a Galaxy phone or tablet.

 

[zipspyder]

HP has reasonable SSD pricing, esp. for PCIe 4.0 SSDs: 512 GB → 2 TB is +$190, which is only $100-ish over retail.

Microsoft, on the other hand, likes to bleed people dry, even worse than Dell and Apple.

Except if that is an upgrade, i.e., the 512GB is already included in the cost of the laptop you are basically paying $100 to add 490GB and not in addition too.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

I'm in the market for a Macbook Air for my wife and damn they charge a bunch for storage! After all consideration I concluded it's better to pay for more RAM and just go with the 256GB option.

 

[twotwotwo]

A pretty good answer here is Framework Laptop. If you're configuring a DIY kit, the price-performance isn't so awesome at the low end, but they charge much less of a premium on RAM and SSDs so the upcoming AMD one with, say, 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD is about $1800, where elsewhere you'd either be paying a lot more with the upgrades or just not have a config like that as an option. (You can also order it with no RAM or SSD and bring your own!)

If you like upgrading somewhat frequently, which I feel like a lot of people reading hardware sites probably do, the replaceable mainboard seems like another plus.

Until recently Framework's only really been good for productivity or casual gaming for lack of dGPU options, which I guess made them less relevant to this site, but they're introducing a 16-incher that should help with that.

 

[drtweak]

On top of that their SSD's aren't even the fastest. I have come across quite a few of them which preform half of the speed of their aftermarket counterparts and in the case of dell, is almost always SK Hynix (All the 2230 SSD's i have that have been swapped were SK Hynix). Now in most cases speed isn't a big deal, but damn the price is meh. We always get their PC's with bare min on storage and add in our own.

 

[CelicaGT]

A pretty good answer here is Framework Laptop. If you're configuring a DIY kit, the price-performance isn't so awesome at the low end, but they charge much less of a premium on RAM and SSDs so the upcoming AMD one with, say, 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD is about $1800, where elsewhere you'd either be paying a lot more with the upgrades or just not have a config like that as an option. (You can also order it with no RAM or SSD and bring your own!)

If you like upgrading somewhat frequently, which I feel like a lot of people reading hardware sites probably do, the replaceable mainboard seems like another plus.

Until recently Framework's only really been good for productivity or casual gaming for lack of dGPU options, which I guess made them less relevant to this site, but they're introducing a 16-incher that should help with that.

My next thin laptop WILL be a Framework. It's the thing everyone has been crowing on for and yet it feels like no one knows they exist. AMD options now too. Also they enable the use of the old mainboard as a mini desktop with 3D printable cases etc.

 

[CelicaGT]

And how many people actually need that much storage space? When the 1TB hard drive in my Dell died, I replaced it with a cheap 250 gb ssd. After installing linux, all my software and vm and images, I still have 100 gb free. I will never use all 250 gb.

I travel frequently and need to store everything locally as sensitive info from work is not available from outside the site network. I could use 4TB easy for that machine but 1TB is good enough. Other than that use case, my travel gaming machine could also use 2TB plus storage. For me 250GB is too tiny to even consider for anything but web browsing couch-terminal. My point being everyone has their unique use case.

 

[J35Bowman]

This is why generally you should be building your own desktop computer. You may not save any money, but you can spec every component, plus it gives you a sense of satisfaction.

The latest computer I built is doing TV duty. It has a case meant to fit in an entertainment center while having lots of storage available, and I built it with a Ryzen 5 7600, NH-L12S cooler, and a good power supply (a quiet build). I could not get any of that buying something off the shelf. Laptops are more problematic, but there's no reason to buy a desktop from one of the big boys. Spec out all your parts, and set a couple hours aside to build it.

 

[savanthsunnyt]

Finally someone pointing out the issue. I find this as an issue few years ago. Like 3-4. People are storing lots and lots of data. Where 4k videos are relevant, there should be lots of storage to compensate all those needs. Even games are hitting big. Atleast gaming PC or laptops should have 2tb at least. Thanks for bringing this up. It would be better if more people bring this up to their attention.

 

[cyrusfox]

Its just market segmentation. Maximizing profit for the OEM based on what people are willing to pay, fleecing those that don't know better. If its not soldered on memory or storage though, I have zero qualms about them charging as much as possible, barebones option + self upgrade eliminates any impact.

If its soldered, we are all stuck with the premium tax. Apple started this game back with the ipod and it continues today. Arguable double the storage in early 2000 was a significant part of the BOM, now it is a few quid, especially with the flash market crashing.

 

[Colif]

On top of that their SSD's aren't even the fastest. I have come across quite a few of them which preform half of the speed of their aftermarket counterparts and in the case of dell, is almost always SK Hynix (All the 2230 SSD's i have that have been swapped were SK Hynix). Now in most cases speed isn't a big deal, but damn the price is meh. We always get their PC's with bare min on storage and add in our own.

Dell seems to be about giving lowest standards. 2020 when no one could buy GPU they put really bad quality ones in their desktops because they knew people were just buying them for the GPU. They aren't in this business to give customer best deal, its all about dumping old cases from 20 years ago that are wrapped in plastic to look good.

Much of their market is selling to people who don't know any better and making bank on that by advertising features that aren't really features. And adding warranties that are free 1st month but charge after that, meaning a lot of people don't notice.

Shame I can't convince my family to not use them.

 

[Oldcompsci]

Any time I buy a pre-canned PC, I buy the absolute lowest amount of RAM and Hard Drive a vendor offers and upgrade the unit myself. Usually "save" between $100 and $200 per unit in doing so, which adds up quickly.

 

[bit_user]

Any time I buy a pre-canned PC, I buy the absolute lowest amount of RAM and Hard Drive a vendor offers and upgrade the unit myself. Usually "save" between $100 and $200 per unit in doing so, which adds up quickly.

Your avatar pic definitely brings back memories for me:

​

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Concerning the topic of this thread, ours wasn't an IBM, but rather a PCs Ltd., which was later renamed to Dell Computer.

Dell - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[abufrejoval]

The worst part is that all the entry level SSDs wind up as e-waste after the DIY 2/4TB NVMe upgrade: there is really nothing reasonable to be done with 250/500GB NVMe drives, not even 8 or 16 of them, although in theory one could bundle them up into some RAIDx pretty quick, even if they were only PCIe v3 themselves, using a switch.

But those cost too darn much to make it worthwhile.

It's one benefit of SATA SSDs, there are plenty of relatively cheap 6x enclosures and if your current mainboard no longer has a proper set of SATA connecors, there are nice M.2 form-factor 6x SATA ASmedia adapters that will take the last 2 remaining PCIe lanes off your hand, which many mainboards support on their 3rd M.2 connector. BTW they work absolutely seamlessly with every OS I've tried.

Collective bandwidth for these SATA drives tops out at 2GByte/s because it's 2 lanes of PCIe v3, but it's a lot better than keeping them in a box.

Laptops have been a true pain of late: first they finally give you the 8 core CPU workstation power in only 15 Watts you've been dreaming off for ages, then they take away DIMM slots. I tend to run plenty of VMs so 16GB is definitely an undue constraint. Currently I try to aim at least for machines with one DIMM slot, so I can update it to 40GB (only gaming clunkers seem to have 2 slots left).

Of course all the upper memory effectively becomes single channel, but at least it doesn't affect the iGPU performance, which is using the first 16GB, which are still dual channel. For most CPU workloads single channel is better than paging.

I have plenty of 8GB DIMMs in a box, too, but they don't cause that much pain...

Another really ugly money saver, that may have gone away for a while has been the onboard WIFI: I have seen single channel WIFI-4 adapters on quad digit € notebooks without an Ethernet alternative and that's just inexcusable when a WIFI-6 capable AX200 costs less than €20 in retail.

Problem is, these WIFI M.2 slots are disappearing, too because of this slimming craze... or because after-market upgrades result in 1% warranty returns, because DIY have fingers too fat for these ultrabooks.

If it wasn't for the excellent device attribute filters at https://geizhals.eu/ or https://skinflint.co.uk/, I'd be tearing my hair out, because these technical details on notebooks are buried so deep in all those "experience" animations on vendor sites, I get cross-eyed after two minutes.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

It's one benefit of SATA SSDs, there are plenty of relatively cheap 6x enclosures and if your current mainboard no longer has a proper set of SATA connecors, there are nice M.2 form-factor 6x SATA ASmedia adapters that will take the last 2 remaining PCIe lanes off your hand, which many mainboards support on their 3rd M.2 connector. BTW they work absolutely seamlessly with every OS I've tried.

Collective bandwidth for these SATA drives tops out at 2GByte/s because it's 2 lanes of PCIe v3, but it's a lot better than keeping them in a box.

Sounds like what I just did with the 4x 970 Evo Plus 2TB drives from my previous build. Rather than maybe get $50 each for them I just got a 4 drive m.2 enclosure for the pcie slot... and paired with the 4x 990 Pro 2TB drives gives me 8 total... for 16TB.

 

[Ogotai]

there is really nothing reasonable to be done with 250/500GB NVMe drives

heh, all of my comps use 250 gig drives for the C (OS) drive, and at least 500 gigs for D (games), with various other sizes as needed bases on the comps usage. i just upgraded my main C drive from a 250 to a 500 gig. so while you think those sizes are not useful, others may use them