What's with higher-spec versions of components being the cheapest? [rant] - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: HwAoRrDk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 05:35:14 pm
content: Bah, I don't understand component distributor's pricing sometimes.Why is it that often a higher-spec component is cheaper (sometimes substantially) than it's lower-spec sibling?For example, yesterday I was looking at some wire-to-board connectors: the version with tin-plated contacts was more expensive (by 50%!) than the version with gold-plated contacts. Or a voltage regulator where the version with tighter output voltage tolerance was cheaper than the version with wider tolerance. Also microcontrollers - a version with more RAM and flash is often cheaper.I can appreciate that sometimes it's down to popularity of parts. For MCUs, if hardly anyone wants the version with meagre memory specs, they won't sell many, so it's not as cost-effective to hold small amounts of stock; and conversely, large quantities sold means they can trim their profit margin and make it up in volume.But for other more mundane parts, where it's clear there's just as much demand for one spec as another, what gives?It's annoying to spend ages putting together your BOM, then accidentally find you could have cut the total cost by 25% by specifyingbetterparts...

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 05:55:49 pm
content: Sometimes prices vary depending on the supply batch. But that's obviously temporary effect and they will equalize or go to normal once the parts form the first batch are over.I've never seen this with microcontrollers though.

author: CraigHB
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 05:55:59 pm
content: The pricing does seem to jostle around a lot for various components. Some of that is due to sales volume, but also they'll put parts on clearance and lower the price sometimes. It always sucks when I order an amount of something, then go back to order it later and the price has gone up a lot. It seems the prices for low quantities are somewhat arbitrary. Most of the time the better specs are more expensive at 1k pricing, but then looking at low quantity pricing better parts may be the same or cheaper.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 06:00:44 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on November 20, 2016, 05:55:49 pmdepends on the brand. pic mcu are priced this way and also older = pricier

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 06:02:53 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on November 20, 2016, 06:00:44 pmAny examples?Quote from: JPortici on November 20, 2016, 06:00:44 pmWell, that's done by a lot of vendors to avoid officially obsoleting the part. I think DigiKey still sells Virtex II Pro FPGAs, they just cost $20000

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 06:08:48 pm
content: (i mostly use mouser) on the top off my head i don't remeber pics with lower memory actually costing more.but i do remember availability issues for example with newer dspics like the GS series, some months after they were officialy introducedon lower end families i remember the price difference being almost negligible. again, didn't note which part. i almost always pick one or two from each family because less headache, the other being the no-debug version for production to increase margin on gadgetsin the reply i was addressing only the age bit

author: Cervisia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 07:44:24 pm
content: QuoteEverbody knows that prices are set by the Supply & Demand Fairy.QuoteIt's possible that the vendor did not predict the demand correctly, and that the supply is off.And don't forget that the distributors donothave an army of beancounters that recompute the price of every article every thirty minutes; they have some constantly tuned software algorithm that by now nobody understands completely.

author: NottheDan
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2016, 09:31:37 pm
content: Quote from: HwAoRrDk on November 20, 2016, 05:35:14 pmDo they actually go to all the work of producing separate photolithography masks for lower-RAM microcontrollers or will they just use the ones from the seconds bin plus however many of the main production run the customers need?