After repeatedly gloomy news about SSD pricing, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. South Korean outlet Chosun Daily reports that the big noises in NAND memory manufacturing are boosting production.
That should mean the upwards pressure on SSD prices for PCs in recent months will ease. Reportedly, South Korea’s leading chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, along with Japan’s Kioxia, are now ramping up production of NAND flash memory having previously cut production due to an earlier a glut of chips pushing down prices.
It was reported in late 2022 and into 2023 that all the big South Korean producers had cut production by around 30% in a bid to firm up prices. Meanwhile, WD and Micron were said to have cut production by over 50%.
More recently, it seems the glut of NAND memory has begun to subside, in part thanks to those production cuts and also increasing demand thanks to, yup you guessed it, the rise of AI datacenters.
Of course, more supply of the NAND flash chips that make up SSDs will very likely lead to downward pressure on SSD prices. Indeed, some observers reckon the increase in NAND production could be a little too much, a little too soon.
“Except for high-capacity NAND used in AI data centers, it is difficult to say that the entire NAND market is recovering. The sudden production surge will likely bring down NAND prices, which have been rising,” says Kim Yang-peng, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade.
Likewise, you could argue that SSD prices for PCs, at least, never really got that bad. Using one of our favourite drives as a guide, the WD Black SN850X launched at about $280 in 2TB trim in the second half of 2022, fell to an all-time though very brief low of $90 in summer 2023, then ticked along at about $120 for a while, which was its realistic long-term low, before creeping up to its current price of $148.
That’s still pretty decent value compared to, oh I dunno, a low-end Nvidia GPU for $500. You can get the SN850X in 1TB format for just $104, too. Anywho, good news is good news and cheaper SSDs is definitely good news. Oh, and you can check out all the best SSD deals here.
