The Tech Report takes a look at 40 SSD drives to see how far the cost per gigabyte has fallen

For years, PC enthusiasts complained that solid-state drives were too expensive. Call us when prices drop below a dollar per gigabyte, they scoffed. Well, their phones have probably been ringing off the hook lately. SSD prices have plummeted to the point where most mainstream drives fall under the dollar-per-gig threshold.

We took our first look at the decline of SSD prices back in June, illustrating the trend with a mountain of data tracing drives all the way back to early 2011. A full quarter has passed since that article, so it's high time for an update. To find out if prices have continued their downward trajectory, we once again called upon the gracious folks at Camelegg, who provided us with another data dump for analysis—this time with even more drives. Camelegg tracks prices at Newegg, which is a pretty good indicator of prevailing market conditions.

First, let's look at how much prices fell during the third quarter, from July 1 to October 1. Ready your scroll wheel; this graph's a doozy.

  SSD prices continue tumbling in Q3